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Three in Four Southeast Asian ECommerce Sellers Require Additional Support in Their AI Adoption, Lazada Report Reveals

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On average, online sellers have adopted AI in only 37% of their business operations.Indonesia and Vietnam lead average AI adoption in eCommerce in Southeast Asia, followed by Singapore and Thailand.Lazada’s new playbook provides sellers with best practices, actionable insights and resources to help integrate AI into their operations.

SINGAPORE, April 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Lazada, a leading eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia, today published its research report on online sellers, Bridging the AI Gap: Online Seller Perceptions and Adoption Trends in Southeast Asia. Developed in collaboration with Kantar, the report surveyed 1,214 eCommerce sellers across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam to examine AI adoption trends, challenges, and opportunities—shedding light on sellers’ readiness to integrate AI into their operations.

Knowledge, perception and implementation gap evident among online sellers

The research reveals that online sellers in Southeast Asia show strong familiarity of AI, with nearly seven in 10 sellers (68%) indicating that they are aware of AI. Sellers believe they have integrated AI into 47% of their business operations, even though actual adoption stands only at 37%, highlighting a clear gap between perceived and actual AI adoption.

Online sellers face a dilemma in terms of assessing AI efficacy and its cost implications. While 89% acknowledge AI’s role in boosting productivity, almost two-third (61%) remain sceptical about its overall usefulness. Furthermore, although nearly all sellers (93%) agree that AI can drive long-term cost savings, 64% cite costliness and time-consuming implementation as barriers to adoption.

The research also suggests an implementation gap, where sellers understand the importance of AI but struggle with effective deployment. Highlighting the challenge of transitioning from familiar, manual processes to AI-driven solutions, nearly all sellers (93%) agree that it is important to upskill the workforce to use AI so that they can be more productive, yet 3 out of 4 sellers (75%) also concede that their employees still prefer to use tools they are familiar with, rather than new AI solutions.

AI-readiness level varies across markets

Across the region, Indonesia and Vietnam lead with 42% AI adoption across business functions, while Singapore and Thailand follow closely at 39%. Based on the level of AI adoption across five core aspects of operations of a seller’s business, namely operations and logistics, product management, marketing and advertising, customer service, and workforce management, the report identifies three distinct seller archetypes – AI Adepts, AI Aspirants, and AI Agnostics[1], based on the average score they attained in each aspect of operations to represent their readiness level to embrace AI:

AI Adepts: Sellers who have integrated AI across at least 80% of their operations, placing them at the forefront of adoption. In Southeast Asia, only 1 in 4 (24%) sellers belong to this category.AI Aspirants: Sellers who have partially integrated AI into their operations, but still face adoption gaps across key functions. 50% of sellers in Southeast Asia belong to this category.AI Agnostics: Comprising the remaining 26% of surveyed sellers in Southeast Asia, this group lags in AI adoption, with most business functions still handled manually.

Findings indicate that Thailand has the highest share of AI Adepts, with 30% of sellers in this category. Singapore (29%), Indonesia (29%), and Vietnam (22%) also demonstrate strong AI implementation despite knowledge gaps, while Malaysia (15%) and the Philippines (19%) face challenges related to internal buy-in and infrastructure limitations. With the majority of Southeast Asian sellers (76%) falling within the AI Aspirants and AI Agnostics categories, they are actively seeking more effective AI-powered solutions, with high demand for AI-powered tools (42%) and enhanced seller support (41%).

“The findings from our research reveal a fascinating gap in Southeast Asia’s eCommerce ecosystem. While most sellers understand AI’s transformative potential, many are still navigating the path from recognition to implementation,” said James Dong, Chief Executive Officer, Lazada Group. “As a leading eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia, we aim to bridge the knowledge and adoption gap by developing accessible AI solutions that address the unique challenges faced by sellers across different markets, ultimately making technology more accessible and driving sustainable business growth regardless of a seller’s size or technical expertise.”

Leveraging Lazada’s AI-driven solutions to transform business operations

To support sellers in their AI adoption journey, Lazada is launching the Online Sellers Artificial Intelligence Readiness Playbook, designed to provide strategic guidance based on sellers’ AI maturity levels. The research reveals that sellers are already leveraging key AI-driven solutions on Lazada’s platform to enhance their efficiency, validating Lazada’s continuous investments into cutting-edge AI innovations and advanced tools that streamline eCommerce operations and drive competitiveness.

With 67% of sellers expressing strong satisfaction in existing Lazada AI features[2], Lazada is also releasing new Generative AI (GenAI) features that are designed to empower sellers and enhance their product listings, streamline operations, and boost customer conversions such as:

AI Smart Product Optimisation: Powered by GenAI, this tool helps sellers identify improvements they can make to their product titles, descriptions, or even photos. It enables automated virtual try-ons, background modifications, and model adjustments, allowing sellers to produce professional product imagery quickly within minutes.AI-Powered Translations: This feature automatically translates product content into multiple local languages, enabling sellers to expand their reach across diverse markets efficiently and accurately.Lazzie Seller: A dedicated AI assistant within the Alibaba Seller Centre (ASC), providing instant responses to frequently asked questions, quick navigation to key features, store risk assessments, and business advice to boost seller efficiency and growth.

To find out more, download the Online Sellers Artificial Intelligence Readiness Playbook to understand how these solutions can offer a structured framework for sellers to integrate AI into their workflows to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation in an ever-evolving eCommerce landscape.

[1] AI Adepts are sellers in the top 25th percentile for AI adoption in terms of their scores, AI Aspirants fall within the middle 25th and 75th percentile, and AI Agnostics are in the bottom 25th percentile.

[2] Refer to Annex for more details

About the Research

Developed in partnership with Kantar, Bridging the AI Gap: Online Seller Perceptions and Adoption Trends in SEA provides a comprehensive analysis of AI adoption trends, challenges, and opportunities, offering insights into how sellers can leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency in Southeast Asia’s evolving eCommerce landscape. The report surveyed 1,214 eCommerce sellers across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in February 2025.

This follows the Artificial Intelligence Adoption in eCommerce in Southeast Asia Whitepaper, another research conducted in partnership with Kantar, which surveyed more than 6,000 eCommerce users in the region in September 2024 to better understand AI awareness, trust and preferences, shopping behaviour, and consumer pain points in the region.

About Lazada Group

Lazada Group is Southeast Asia’s pioneer eCommerce platform. For the last 13 years, Lazada has been accelerating progress in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam through commerce and technology. Today, a thriving local ecosystem links about 160 million active users to more than one million actively-selling sellers every month, who are transacting safely and securely via trusted payment channels and Lazada Wallet, receiving parcels through a homegrown logistics network that has become the largest in the region.

Annex

Lazada’s AI features for sellers:

Lazada Business Advisor: AI-powered analytics tool that provides real-time insights to optimise sales and business performance. Almost seven in 10 Lazada sellers report strong satisfaction and almost half (48%) actively use this tool to track trends and make data-driven decisions

Lazada Sponsored Solutions: A targeted advertising platform that boosts product visibility and maximises sales through AI-driven recommendations. Two in three (67%) sellers report strong satisfaction, and 46% actively use this tool, citing its positive impact on sales growth.

AI Smart Listing: Generative AI tool that automates product listing by generating and pre-filling compelling attributes based on images or keywords. 64% of sellers report strong satisfaction in leveraging this feature to reduce listing time and improve content quality.

Virtual Try-Ons: An AI-powered AR feature that allows shoppers to visualise products in real time, increasing purchase confidence and reducing returns. 62% of sellers express strong satisfaction with its effectiveness, with 42% of sellers using it actively.

AI Selling Points: A tool that analyses product data and customer behaviour to automatically highlight key product features to drive conversions. 68% of sellers express strong satisfaction with this feature and 42% actively use it to attract more customers to their storefront online.

Lazada IM Shop Assistant (LISA): An AI-powered tool that helps sellers enhance customer engagement by providing automated, AI-driven responses to inquiries, improving service efficiency and conversion rates. 65% of sellers express strong satisfaction with this feature and 38% actively use it.

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SOURCE Lazada Group

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ObjectWin India Rebrands as FornaxTech; Focuses on AI-Led Transformation and GCC-Driven Global Delivery

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BANGALORE, India, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ObjectWin India has rebranded as FornaxTech, reflecting its evolution into a capability-led organization aligned with the Fornax Group and focused on supporting AI-native enterprises, Global Capability Centers (GCCs), and global delivery models.

The move comes as enterprises accelerate investments in AI and expand GCCs as hubs for innovation, product development, and digital transformation.

FornaxTech will continue to build on ObjectWin India’s established strengths in technology talent and solutions, while expanding its role in enabling capability development, execution alignment, and transformation outcomes.

“This transition reflects where we already are and where we are heading,” said Saurav Lenka, CEO of FornaxTech. “We are building on a strong foundation while expanding how we create value through deeper capability, global delivery alignment, and more integrated engagement in an AI-driven world.”

As part of Fornax Group, the company will leverage broader capabilities, geographic reach, and enterprise relationships to support multi-market engagements and more complex transformation needs.

“This is an important step in strengthening a unified direction across the group,” said Subrata Nag, Founder & Group CEO, Fornax Corporate Services. “It allows us to bring together talent, technology, and execution in a more cohesive way to support evolving enterprise needs in an AI-led, globally distributed landscape.”

FornaxTech said it will focus on:

Capability-led engagement across global teams and GCCsIntegration of talent, platforms, and processesAI-native approaches to delivery and execution

The company’s delivery framework is supported by ObjectWin India’s CMMI Level 3 certification for Services, reflecting established process maturity, execution consistency, and scalability for enterprise engagements.

About FornaxTech

FornaxTech is a technology and talent solutions company focused on enabling enterprise transformation in an AI-native and globally distributed environment. As part of the Fornax Group, the company supports organizations with integrated capabilities across talent, technology, and execution.

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2966208/FornaxTech_Logo.jpg

 

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Certis and Ensign InfoSecurity Partner to Strengthen Cybersecurity and Governance in AI-Driven Robotics

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Collaboration strengthens governance and cyber resilience as autonomous AI
becomes increasingly embedded in physical and operational environments

SINGAPORE, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Certis Group, Singapore’s leading provider of integrated security and operations solutions, and Ensign InfoSecurity, Asia Pacific’s largest pure-play cybersecurity services provider, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the Milipol TechX (MTX) 2026, a regional platform for security and technology innovation, to strengthen cybersecurity, safety and governance in robotic systems powered by artificial intelligence.

The partnership addresses a growing challenge as AI systems evolve from assisting humans to acting autonomously. Beyond conventional cybersecurity threats which typically result in data breaches or system outages, vulnerabilities in AI robotic systems carry an additional category of risk: manipulated sensor inputs, loss of supervisory control, or autonomous systems executing unintended physical actions with real-world consequences.

This collaboration comes as Singapore increases the deployment of autonomous systems to aid in security, logistics and transport operations, highlighting the urgent need to translate governance principles into practical, operational safeguards, particularly in real-world environments where there is little room for error.

Under the MOU, both organisations will work together to strengthen cybersecurity, safety and ethical governance in AI-driven robotics. Certis will lead the development and implementation of safety and ethics fail-safes, as well as Human-in-the-Loop interfaces within the AI robotic platform. In parallel, Ensign will oversee the development of cybersecurity requirements governing the platform’s communication interfaces, as well as the AI’s core reasoning and decision-making processes, including the design of cybersecurity controls, standards and frameworks.

Together, the partnership will embed guardrails across the full system lifecycle, from design and development to testing, deployment and eventual decommissioning, while advancing cybersecurity capabilities, cross-domain knowledge-sharing, and practical frameworks to support the secure and responsible use of autonomous systems.

“As Certis accelerates the development and deployment of our robotics and AI across our operations, we are cognisant that the power of these technologies is only as strong as the security that protects them,” Mr Alex Ooi, Chief Information Security Officer of Certis, said.

“In this new era of industrialised AI, cybersecurity is no longer a peripheral function, but a critical enabler of our future. For Certis, securing our autonomous systems means more than just protecting data; it means ensuring the operational integrity and safety of the physical environments we are trusted to guard. By embedding rigorous cyber-resilience into every tech, robot and algorithm we deploy, we are building a future where innovation and absolute trust coexist seamlessly in this partnership,’ Mr Ooi added.

Key areas of focus in the MOU include

Developing ethical, safety-first approaches for AI-driven robotics, supported by shared standards across data handling, model training and real-world operationsEmbedding security and risk management by design across the system lifecycle, including threat identification, risk assessment and safeguards against unauthorised access and tamperingImplementing human-centric safety protocols and robust human-in-the-loop controls to ensure effective oversight and interventionStrengthening cyber-physical resilience through testing and operations, including adversarial testing of AI-driven robotic behaviours, continuous monitoring and specialised capabilities such as threat analysis, incident response and penetration testing

A joint Safety and Security Review Board will be established to oversee implementation and ensure alignment with evolving safety and ethical expectations.

“The rise of AI is raising the stakes for enterprise security. It goes beyond protecting systems to ensuring that autonomous decisions remain bounded, explainable and secure,” said Paul Tan, Executive Vice President of Government and Singapore Enterprises, Ensign InfoSecurity. “Having operationalised AI in security environments, we see firsthand how quickly autonomy can scale. The challenge is ensuring that control, governance and resilience scale with it, especially when these systems affect real-world operations and outcomes. This collaboration focuses on embedding cybersecurity into the way these systems are designed and deployed from the outset.”

The MOU signals a shift in how organisations deploying autonomous systems must think about risk, not as an IT concern to be managed downstream, but as a foundational design requirement woven into every layer of the system.

About Certis Group

Certis is an integrated operations service provider, built on decades of experience in security and critical frontline operations. We design and run security, facilities and workforce management as a single operating model, orchestrating people, systems and processes in complex, real-world environments to drive results.

Our approach is grounded in structured operational design, where processes, workflows and resources are engineered around defined outcomes. Further powered by our adoption of advanced technologies including AI and Robotics, Certis drives coordination, visibility and day-to-day execution across operations for its clients.

Headquartered in Singapore, Certis operates across key regional markets including Australia and Qatar, supported by a global team of over 25,000 employees. We are trusted by local governments and enterprises to deliver operational performance to make our world safer, smarter, and better.

For more information, please visit www.certisgroup.com.

About Ensign InfoSecurity 

Ensign InfoSecurity is Asia Pacific’s largest pure-play cybersecurity services provider and a trusted global partner, delivering end-to-end security solutions across the cyber lifecycle. Headquartered in Singapore, Ensign is recognised for deep capabilities spanning advisory and assurance, secure architecture and systems integration, threat intelligence, managed security operations, and incident response. Ensign also drives its own innovation through Ensign Labs, developing advanced proprietary solutions to address complex customer challenges. With over two decades of experience, Ensign provides resilient, intelligence-led security tailored to real business risks.

For more information, visit www.ensigninfosecurity.com 

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SOURCE Ensign InfoSecurity

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Agoda Unveils Top 5 Labor Day Destinations for 2026

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SINGAPORE, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Digital travel platform Agoda has identified the top five holiday destinations for Labor Day 2026, based on accommodation search data. This year’s list features Tokyo, Pattaya, Seoul, Osaka, and Busan, offering a mix of cultural experiences, vibrant cityscapes, and relaxing getaways for travelers to explore new destinations and unwind from their daily routines.

Tokyo, Japan, offers a captivating blend of tradition and modernity. Visitors can explore the capital city’s historic sites such as the Meiji Shrine and the Imperial Palace, while also experiencing the futuristic allure of districts like Shibuya and Akihabara. The city’s culinary scene is a highlight, with everything from Michelin-starred restaurants to bustling street food markets. Tokyo’s vibrant neighborhoods, cultural festivals, and cutting-edge technology make it a dynamic destination for travelers seeking both excitement and cultural enrichment.

Pattaya, Thailand, known for its lively beaches and vibrant nightlife, provides a tropical escape on Thailand’s eastern Gulf coast. The city offers a mix of relaxation and adventure, with opportunities for water sports, island hopping, and exploring nearby attractions like the Sanctuary of Truth. Pattaya’s Walking Street is famous for its energetic nightlife, while quieter spots like Jomtien Beach provide a more laid-back atmosphere. With its diverse range of activities and stunning coastal views, Pattaya is an ideal destination for those looking to unwind and enjoy the sun.

Seoul, South Korea, is a city where history and innovation coexist harmoniously. Visitors can explore ancient palaces such as Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, while also enjoying the modern attractions of districts like Gangnam and Myeongdong. Seoul’s vibrant street markets, diverse culinary offerings, and thriving arts scene provide endless opportunities for exploration. The city’s efficient public transportation system makes it easy to navigate, allowing travelers to experience everything from traditional tea houses to cutting-edge technology hubs.

Osaka, Japan, known for its street food and entertainment districts, delights the senses with its unique offerings. Visitors can indulge in local specialties like takoyaki and okonomiyaki, while exploring bustling areas such as Dotonbori and Namba. Osaka Castle offers a glimpse into the city’s historical past, while Universal Studios Japan provides family-friendly entertainment. With its friendly locals and lively atmosphere, Osaka is a welcoming destination that offers a unique blend of culture, cuisine, and fun.

Busan, South Korea, offers stunning coastal views and a rich cultural landscape. The country’s second-largest city is home to a range of beaches, such as Haeundae and Gwangalli, which are perfect for relaxation and water activities. Visitors can explore cultural landmarks like the Beomeosa Temple and the Gamcheon Culture Village, known for its colorful houses and artistic installations. Busan’s seafood markets and local cuisine provide a taste of the region’s culinary heritage. With its mix of natural beauty and cultural attractions, Busan is a serene yet engaging destination for travelers.

Jay Lee, Regional Director, North Asia at Agoda shared, “Labor Day offers a great opportunity to explore new destinations. Whether you’re drawn to the bustling energy of Tokyo or the serene landscapes of Busan, Agoda’s comprehensive selection of accommodations, flights, and activities provides the flexibility to plan a trip that suits your preferences. Our platform is designed to make travel planning straightforward and enjoyable, ensuring a memorable Labor Day experience for all travelers.”

With over 6 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities, Agoda offers travelers the flexibility to create their ideal Labor Day getaway. For the best deals, travelers can visit Agoda’s website or download the Agoda mobile app.

 

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SOURCE Agoda

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