Why Thailand Is a Crucial Test for AHA’s Performance-Linked E-Commerce Model

An Indonesian e-commerce operator is taking an unusual route to Thailand. Hand over management of a marketplace business, and it will target at least 20% revenue growth while keeping gross profit positive, or waive its commission.

For AHA Commerce, that performance guarantee is the wedge into its first overseas market. For brands, it arrives at a more complicated point in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce cycle. Thailand’s platform GMV surged to $35.5 Bn in 2025, up 51.8%, according to Momentum Works, making it the region’s fastest-growing major market. But virtually all of that business is concentrated across three platforms. Shopee controlled 50%, TikTok Shop 32% and Lazada 18%.

That combination—rapid growth and concentrated distribution—is changing what brands need from the companies managing their online businesses. Getting products onto a marketplace is no longer particularly difficult. Generating profitable sales after accounting for advertising, affiliates, promotions, logistics and platform charges is.

AHA is betting that a model built over 15 years in Indonesia can travel. The Jakarta-based company began managing its first Thai marketplace account in September 2025 for an unidentified brand already operating in the country. AHA says sales subsequently increased 221%. It has not disclosed the client, the starting sales base or the period over which the increase was measured, making the claim impossible to assess independently.

The test has since become a formal expansion. AHA said its Thai unit has been legally incorporated, with a local office and team established and employees recruited in Thailand. The Thai operation handles local execution while the Indonesian team provides systems support and operational expertise.

AHA has managed more than 280 brands and 8.1 Mn orders, representing more than IDR453 Bn in GMV under management over the past 12 months, supported by more than 220 employees. The company has operated online since 2011.

Its Thailand move, then, is less a scale story than a portability test.

The proposition rests on putting part of AHA’s own fee on the line. Under its published terms, qualifying clients are guaranteed at least 20% revenue growth and positive gross profit within an agreed period. Eligibility includes monthly revenue of at least IDR200 Mn, while AHA’s gross profit calculation deducts marketplace fees, marketing expenditure and its own service fee and assumes cost of goods sold at 30%.

Clients must also maintain adequate inventory, provide full marketplace access, keep pricing competitive and fund marketing at levels recommended by AHA. If the agreed targets are missed while those conditions are satisfied, AHA waives its commission. The management fee, however, remains payable.

This distinction is important. It is not a money-back guarantee and AHA is not underwriting a client’s overall profitability. It partially transfers performance risk from the brand to the company managing its digital storefront.

That becomes more relevant as the economics of selling through Southeast Asia’s marketplaces tighten.

Regional platform GMV reached $157.6 Bn in 2025, according to Momentum Works. Yet the market has consolidated even as it has expanded. Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop, including Tokopedia, accounted for 98.8% of platform GMV.

For merchants, that concentration creates reach but also dependence. The dominant platforms provide traffic, payments, logistics and ready-made demand at a scale individual brands would struggle to reproduce. But accessing that demand is becoming more expensive.

Shopee’s GAAP take rate, revenue as a percentage of GMV, increased to 13.5% in the fourth quarter of 2025 from 12.8% a year ago. That metric is not the same as a merchant’s all-in selling cost. A brand’s own economics will also depend on advertising, affiliates, vouchers, promotions, fulfilment and other expenditure required to generate sales.

The result is a shift in what brands expect from e-commerce enablers. The first phase of online retail across ASEAN created demand for companies that could open stores, manage orders and co-ordinate fulfilment across fragmented marketplaces. The next phase increasingly requires them to determine which sales are economically worth pursuing.

AHA has built its pitch around that question.

Its proprietary AHAbot system uses historical store data to guide decisions, including which products to promote, which campaigns to join and how much discounting to apply. The company says it developed the system from the experience of managing hundreds of online stores and now uses it as a standard part of its Thai operations.

The technology alone is unlikely to constitute a durable moat. Advertising optimisation, automation and AI-assisted commerce tools are spreading across marketplaces and among the companies that service them. The harder advantage to reproduce may be combining those systems with operating execution and a commercial model that links part of AHA’s compensation to the outcome.

Thailand offers a particularly demanding place to test it.

TikTok Shop captured almost a third of the country’s platform GMV last year, behind Shopee but well ahead of Lazada, accelerating the convergence of entertainment, creators and commerce.

Google, Temasek and Bain & Company estimated that Thailand had about 850,000 video-commerce sellers in 2025, up 175% from a year ago, while transaction volumes reached 1.3 Bn. Thailand was the region’s second-largest video-commerce market by transaction volume.

For brands, that means marketplace management is no longer simply about product listings and paid search. It increasingly involves creators, affiliates, livestreaming, promotions and constant decisions about where incremental marketing spend will deliver a worthwhile return.

AHA is not entering an empty market. Thailand already has established e-commerce enablers and regional operators offering combinations of marketplace management, performance marketing, fulfilment, data and social-commerce services.

The competitive question for AHA, therefore, is not whether brands need outside help. It is whether its combination of automation, execution and performance-linked pricing can produce enough incremental profit to justify another layer of cost.

Thailand makes that question sharper because its e-commerce boom is taking place against a weaker consumer backdrop. The economy expanded 1.9% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, slowing from 2.8% in the first, according to the National Economic and Social Development Council. The Bank of Thailand said private consumption also softened during the quarter as higher living costs weighed on household spending.

Online commerce can keep gaining share even as consumers become more cautious. But that environment makes discount-heavy strategies designed to increase order volumes less attractive for brands protecting margins.

That is the opening AHA is targeting.

The bigger test is whether an operating system developed in Indonesia can remain effective after crossing a border.

Indonesia remains Southeast Asia’s largest platform e-commerce market at $57.7 Bn, but its structure differs from Thailand’s. Shopee accounted for 54% of Indonesian platform GMV in 2025, while TikTok Shop and Tokopedia accounted for 41% together. AHA is attempting to solve that portability problem by keeping its systems and operational expertise anchored in Indonesia while localising execution in Thailand.

“The underlying principles remain the same, but the execution must be relevant to local market conditions,” AHA co-founder and chief business officer Andre Chouw said as he announced the expansion.

That balance will determine whether the model can become regional.

Software can make campaign decisions repeatable and data can make them faster. Shared infrastructure can lower operating costs across markets. But e-commerce across ASEAN remains unusually local, with language, creators, pricing, promotions and platform behaviour all helping determine whether consumers will buy.

AHA’s first Thai account offers one encouraging data point, although it remains entirely company-reported. Building a regional business will require reproducing that result across brands and categories while preserving the economics behind it.

It matters because Southeast Asia’s next phase of e-commerce is likely to create less value from simply putting more merchants online. With three platforms already controlling almost the entire regional marketplace economy, the more valuable operators may be those that can help brands extract better economics from infrastructure they cannot afford to ignore.

Thailand is AHA Commerce’s first attempt to prove it can be one of them.