Forrest, let's jump right in. There's so many questions that I want to help this audience learn about you and your business, and the amazing success you've had. So let's get started with what I call the origin story. It was the year 2009 when Garena launched. There was probably a lot of skepticism about whether Southeast Asia could really build a large-scale internet business. Looking back, what was it that was motivating you to enter and grow in this market? Great, yeah. Thank you, Tyler. Thank you for the nice introduction.
Before I answer the question, I just want to take an opportunity to... Yeah, hello, everyone. I'm Forrest. It's great to see everybody here. I really look forward to having this session together with all of you. And actually, thank you, Stripe, to bring Stripe to Singapore. I think this is a great opportunity to bring the entire tech entrepreneur community together. So I see a lot of very young entrepreneurs and the founders in the audience today. This reminds me about 15, 20 years ago, being one of you sitting in the audience, trying to get experience, get advice, and maybe a little bit of aspiration.
So yeah, thank you. Thank you for doing this in Singapore. We hope you... We try to do my best job so you can bring you back every year. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. We'd love to do that. We'd love to do that. So, Forrest, take us back to 2009. Yes. What was your founding experience like? I, myself, am a gamer. Before I came to Singapore, I spent the time studying in the States. At the time, actually, I probably played too many games. I spent too much time in the... You were doing research. Yeah, the game and the... And compared to in the classroom.
And when I was here, I realized there's such a strong gaming culture and people love to talk about games and play games. That is still... We are talking about back then. It's even before the mobile game times. It's still the PC time. And the famous game is World of Warcraft and then later on League of Legends. Those are the times... I'm not sure this is too old for the audience, but that's the game we're talking about back then.
And everybody played in the separate cafes, all the separate cafes, you're traveling the region. You saw a lot of passion. And... But if you ask any executive from the game industry, they say, what's your plan? Have you ever thought about Southeast Asia being a very, very good game market? And then nobody thinks about it. They say we never see any revenue and we never see any kind of a business case from Southeast Asia. Actually, then we dive into more details. So we say, okay, it sounds like there's a gap. You have such a big user base. People love the games. There's no business case.
And actually, interestingly, because Stripe is really, really famous. It's doing fantastic. The best payment solution provider. And back then, we realized, actually, this is a payment issue. And because most of the gamers, they're teenagers. And this is, again, about 15, 20 years ago. Credit card penetration is super, super low. And people just, they even love to play the game. They want to experience the full experience of the game, full function nationality. But the thing is, they have no way for them to pay because most of the gamers don't have the credit card.
And then we say, that is actually a challenge. I still remember the early days, we came out a very bottom-up manual solution. And then we decide, okay, if that is the case, let's do something, try to do something differently. So we designed our own prepaid card. And then we distribute our own prepaid card. I still remember our first office in Chinatown, in the shophouse. Every day, I walk into the offices, I walk into a warehouse, and it's half of the offices filled with bags. And it's all the bags of our self-designed and self-made prepaid card.
And then we have some very, very talented, ambitious computer scientists, graduate from the U.S., and the person thinks they signed up a job for world-class coding, but end up they drive a small one, just go around to Singapore and deliver the prepaid card to not only the convenience store, which is a more common case back then, but actually it's delivered to every single separate cafe where game play the game is.
And because of that, gamers have easier access to the payment solutions and they can pay for the game. I think it's a mutual beneficial to game developers, start to see revenue, and the gamers, because by paying, they get a chance to have the full experience of the game. So yeah, that's amazing. It's interesting, you talk about we are very much into the game, but end up it's payment, the thing, it's become a critical breakthrough for us in the early days. Yeah, so I love that idea that he saw an unmet need and you found a way to creatively, in this case, prepaid cards, get started, but that payments became the great unlock for growth.
C has built an impressive group of companies, Garena, Shopee, Money, all from the ground up. Most companies struggle to be successful with one product. You've been successful with three different products. How do you do that? How do you create success in adjacent opportunities? Throughout the entire our company history, I think we are enabled and driven by the strong entrepreneurial spirit. I think that is very, very important.
So we have a very, very long history tradition. We, every year, went to the top universities, starting from Singapore, but over the years, it's pretty much all over the world. We have a fresh graduate program called, we call it the GMAP. It's a management associate program. We pick the young talents and every year we select the 10 to 20 and then we put them into a two-year rotation program, let them experience the different part of the business and travel to the different places.
And every year, the top leadership involved in the final interview, and also I just spent the time with their graduation, the latest batch graduation. And actually, the one thing I told them, if you are here today and if you forget everything about this whole day workshop, graduation ceremony, the one thing I hope you all remember, it doesn't matter what you do with the company after graduation, is remember you are joining a startup. You are not joining a big company.
So that's the key message. So I think that is a way across the entire organization from the top leadership to the fresh graduate. So that's the things I think keep us progressing and keep trying to do things differently and innovation. On the other hand, I think it's related to the things just about the payment things. It's not just, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur and I hope entrepreneurship is not just a lifestyle or things of being cool, being called co-founder, or yes, this is a cool thing. So still need to back to the fundamental to identify what is the specific issue, what is the specific problem we are trying to solve.
This reminds me when we started the e-commerce business. It's five years after we are into game business. How come a game company can start an e-commerce business? But actually, it's hard for me back then to swallow the fact that there is no such e-commerce marketplace platform in Southeast Asia and things have been done so well in the U.S. and in China. Why such things doesn't exist in Southeast Asia? I think that is kind of a fundamental belief we have, and to say, okay, yeah, if this is the opportunity and if we believe in ourselves, let's try to take the opportunity.
Wonderful. I love that. So if you were going to remember one thing, you always tell them you're joining a startup. Yes. Even though you're 60,000 employees now. Yes. That's a great way to look at it, a great spirit behind it. Okay, so let's talk about competition. Let's talk about competing. When it comes to winning in Southeast Asia, Forrest, what do you think outsiders frequently don't understand about winning here?
In a way, if you look at Southeast Asia as a market, there's a lot of fantastic things. And it's a very young population and the life quality is getting better and better. It's a very big consumption market and there's a large population. So there's a lot of things. But on the other hand, it's also a very fragmented market and you cannot just think about Southeast Asia as one market. And if you think about the difference between Singapore and Vietnam, it's a two-hour flight distance, but in terms of the economic development stage of the economy and the people's 60,000 employees now. Yes. That's a great way to look at it, a great spirit behind it. Okay, so let's talk
about competition. Let's talk about competing. When it comes to winning in Southeast Asia, Forrest, what do you think outsiders frequently don't understand about winning here? In a way, if you look at Southeast Asia as a market, there's a lot of fantastic things, right? And it's a very young population, and the life quality is getting better and better. It's a very big consumption market, and there's a large population. So there's a lot of things. But on the other hand, it's also a very fragmented market, and you cannot just think about Southeast Asia as one market. And if you think
about the difference between Singapore and Vietnam, right? It's a two-hour flight distance, but in terms of the economic development stage of the economy and the people's quality of life, there are so many diverse things. I think it's critical for, it's very, very important to come up with bottom-up solutions for each specific market. I think for us, looking back, we benefit a lot by being a Singapore startup, a Singapore company. We see a lot of, we have been competing over the years with a lot of competitors. They're pretty much originally coming from either China or the US. That is pretty much
the two very, very big superpowers in the tech industry and all the things we are doing. But a lot of them already have a very successful, proven playbook in their home market. Okay, this is how they win the US market, and this is how they win the China market. And they bring that. Everything is very optimized for that playbook. So it's very natural for them when they come to Southeast Asia, they just say, okay, this is our playbook. This works in our home markets, so it must be working here. And it turns out, I think that is not always the case. There's always best practices that can be shared across the whole world. But specifically, there are also a lot of things.
It's very, very different. And I think being a Singapore company, the benefit is, at the very, very early days, we had to think about going to other markets. It's not like just trying to be successful only in the Singapore market as a home market. So we remember, we called ourselves in the early days, we were already a multinational startup. And another thing is because we identified Singapore as so different even from the neighboring countries. Whatever works in Singapore doesn't mean it's going to work in the other neighboring countries, neighboring markets. So when we go to any market, we have to identify the bottom-up solutions and the cases. And I think that is very
critical in our journey. Can you talk more about bottom-up? I think that's been a theme that we've been talking about, really solving a need in that market and then growing from there. Can you just describe more of that philosophy? Sure. I'm happy to give you two examples. One is Indonesia, and one is Brazil. This is both with our e-commerce business Shopkey. When we launched Shopkey, we launched quickly across Southeast Asia. This was about 10 years ago. The interesting thing is we launched the app. People could start to buy things in Indonesia, and then we realized in Indonesia there is a very, very specific challenge. People can make the order online through
our mobile phone app, but they cannot pay online. Online banking, online payment is not available. So the typical user behavior is they make a purchase online, and then we have to issue them a code, and then they need to travel to an ATM or a bank branch to make the payment using the code. So it's very, very much counterintuitive. This is not e-commerce, right? If you have to travel somewhere else physically to make the payment, then maybe it's just easier to go to the shop to buy the things. Why bother to order online? Actually, what makes things worse is at that time, the entire banking system in Indonesia, for security reasons, when people, when the buyer paid us, they
didn't tell us, they didn't disclose the identity of the payer. So they didn't let us know what bank account number paid us. So for us, it's like, okay, we sold 10 bottles of water and we received the payment, but we didn't know who paid us. I don't think that's e-commerce. Yeah, and who are we going to deliver to, right? So I think for those things, you never realize them if you've just been sitting in Singapore. Even 10 years ago, you probably didn't have such an issue, but this became the issue in Indonesia for us to grow, to continually increase the penetration. And one thing we did is we thought about, and it was still quite innovative, the way we identified
the specific buyer is basically for the 10 bottles of water, we sold them at 10 different prices. So it's like probably each bottle of water with a difference of maybe a partial of one rupiah. So economically it's not much difference, but the price is the same, but then the price itself became the identification of the buyer. And then we had hundreds of people sitting in the office. Everything they did was just do the matching. Yeah, so. But this is the type of localization that solves problems. It's not in some playbook from the United States or from China. I think Amazon never had such a problem in the US. Go to an ATM with a code. And another example I want to
mention is Brazil. I always get this question. Being a Singapore company, a Southeast Asian company, how come you ended up in Brazil? Why did you build up an e-commerce business there? And actually, this was also by identifying the specific opportunity and the challenge there. In 2019, I brought the entire team to Brazil. And this was for all of us, the leadership team. It was the first time being in Brazil. And the reason we were there is because of our video game business. We have a self-developed game called Free Fire. And the game suddenly got popular in Brazil. We said, okay, we need to go there at least to pay some respect to the market. And then at that time, we
realized one thing. This was 2019, and the e-commerce penetration in Brazil was already behind compared to Indonesia, which actually, if you think about Brazil e-commerce, it started much, much, much earlier than Indonesia. And then we dug into a little more detail, and we realized the reason the penetration was so low is because the logistics cost is very, very high. For every single parcel delivered in Brazil, it cost more than five US dollars. And to cover that logistics cost, to make the unit economics work, you can only sell expensive things. If you sell $100 things, okay, five dollars goes to logistics, you can probably still make money. But if you sell
$10 things, and half of the cost will go to logistics, then that doesn't work. This ended up being that in Brazil, actually, counterintuitively, e-commerce is for wealthy people. You ask people on the street, they cannot afford buying things on e-commerce. So it's very, very, here we already talk about e-commerce offering the lowest price, right? And this is a different story in Brazil. That's why we said, okay, this is a fantastic opportunity, and we have accumulated a lot of experience in Southeast Asia in how to build up the logistics network, how to bring the logistics cost low. So this is a specific opportunity that gave us the confidence and the conviction that we
could probably make something happen in Brazil. Wow, two amazing examples. And the learning is: start bottom-up, identify an unmet need, and then get creative to go meet that need. Fantastic. Well, competing isn't just about great products, it's about great people and great culture. I know that you work on culture every day, and you're very focused on customer service. Can you talk a little bit more about that theme and how you build a culture focused on that? Yeah, yeah, this is a great question. I think by the end of the day, this is probably, you're never too early to think about these culture questions, and also you're never too late to think about it. I think when we
started the company, you're basically just led by example. So everybody joining the company will see what is the right thing to do in this company, what is the way to talk about it, what is the behavior to be encouraged or discouraged, or discouraged. I think we say we don't need to talk about the culture, we just show bad identify an unmet need, and then get creative to go meet that need. Fantastic. Well, competing isn't just about great products, it's about great people and great culture. I know that you work on culture every day and you're very focused on customer service. Can you talk a little bit more about that theme and how you build a culture focused on that?
Yeah, yeah, this is a great question. I think by the end of the day, this is probably, it is never too early to think about these culture questions, and also it would never be too late to think about it. I think when we started the company, you just lead by example. So everybody joining the company will see what is the right thing to do in this company, what is the way to talk about, what is the behavior to be encouraged or discouraged or discouraged. I think we say we don't need to talk about the culture, we just show by example and people will follow. I remember this is in our year five as the company, and we grow the team to the size which is not the case. Everybody
can see the leaders, can see me, can see my leadership team on a daily basis. So we start to have multiple offices in different markets. They may only see me occasionally, we are not working together on a daily basis. But then we need to find a way to tell people what is the culture and what is the company about and what is the way encouraged and what is the way discouraged. So we bring the leadership together for a weekend. Let's work out our culture and what are the things about this company. We end up figuring out five things. We define our culture as we serve, so we run, we adapt, and we commit, and we stay humble. So this is the five things we think. Surprisingly,
we only spent half a day, we figure this out, we reached the consensus. This highly described who we are. I think it's actually the first one, we serve. As Tyler just mentioned, it's always put customer first. And among all the five things, we also believe probably the most important one is stay humble. Yes, talk about that. I know this is not always the thing in the American culture setting, right? We need more humility. But I think we benefit a lot from that. Fundamental things we believe allow us to serve our customers better. And it allows us to really identify what is the challenge and what is the gap and how we can make ourselves better. It's hard to
imagine building something that people need if you're not humble enough to listen. Or to be open to feedback. We were talking about the number of escalations that come to you from customers and how valuable that really is because they really care and want your help, want to help you fix something. Yes, that's amazing. Actually, I receive emails from customers on a daily basis. I think probably somewhere my email is posted online, so every day I receive some emails, and I take every email very, very seriously because I realize people only write to me directly without resolving it through other channels. We always have all the customer service support things. They can try
to figure out, resolve things, but if they have a strong case they want to write to me. Interestingly, most of the cases, and now we look at the cases in a very serious way with the visibility of the entire leadership team, we solve that specific issue, but I would say more than half of the situation, this also reflects something wrong with our process, with our flow. There's some truth there. Yes. Yeah. So if any of you are not happy with any shopping order or whatever, yeah, welcome to write to me. We'll put the email up later. No, we won't do that. Okay, let's shift to talk about money for a minute because we've talked about how you saw a need for gaming, you
saw a need for commerce, you're now starting to provide financial services to SMEs, and they're really underserved customers for lending and needs for growth. Talk to us about your strategy there. Yeah, it's interesting. As I just mentioned, we see our financial services called money. It's a very natural extension from our e-commerce business, Shopee. This is just another way to continually help our whole ecosystem, both the buyers and the sellers. And as I just mentioned, I gave the example of originally we have this issue in Indonesia for the customer to pay us. And then along the way we developed the Shopee Pay wallet. This has become a mobile wallet and it's highly
integrated with Shopee. And today it's become also one of the largest standalone mobile wallets in the region, specifically Indonesia. So this allowed, initially this just allowed people to, they still need to go to the ATM, but they can just, rather than make each transaction one by one, they can store some money into the mobile wallet, and then later on they can just use our Shopee Pay mobile wallet to make the purchase on Shopee. It's win-win for the merchant and the consumer or the small business? It just reduced the friction of the entire transaction. And later along the way we also identified something interesting. We see there are a lot of purchases, there is a
surge of the purchases usually in the middle of the month and towards the end of the month. So then we realize this is probably work very well together with the payroll cycle. So in a lot of our markets, people probably receive their pay every two weeks or just monthly, and that is the day they start to buy things. In a way, but we also know things like we have more and more merchandise on Shopee, and Shopee has become a daily destination for people for whatever they need. It's everything, anytime you want, you can buy from Shopee. We feel like our customers, our buyers, shouldn't be restricted by this payday thing. This is why we start to think about we should offer them
credit for them to buy things on Shopee, and this could be mutually beneficial. Later on, we realized actually the reason for that is also because, compared to Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, compared to the western market, simply because credit card penetration is very, very low. So in a very high penetration credit card market, this consumption credit need probably can be met by the credit card, but it's not really the case in our market. Even today, things like Indonesia, for example, the credit card penetration is probably still below 20%, so most people don't have easy access to credit cards. Either they have to delay their purchase, or late payment for school fees
or medical needs or any family needs, or they have to borrow money from loan sharks, very high-interest things. So for that business, we start to explore credit when they buy things on Shopee. And later on, when we see the credit score, when we know everybody better, we start to lend them so they can spend the money for anything, right? And later on we also expand to offline as pay later. Today that business grow very well. And just to give everybody a sense, at this moment we have over $10 billion loan book.
So it's like we lend out throughout ourselves, lend out over $10 billion, and at this moment there's about 50 million people have outstanding credit with us. So if you do the math, it's about $200 per person. So I think, again, in the Singapore setting, maybe $200, yeah, it's just not much, but for a lot of people in our market, this makes a huge difference to their daily life. And we're very fortunate we figured out a way we can lend at such a big scale
to have so many people benefit from these credit facilities, and at the same time also build it as a sustainable business. Think about that, $10 billion to 50 million people, enabling better lives, growing businesses, to a need that has long been there, long been there. Okay, so on that note, I just want to reemphasize how excited we are at Stripe with the partnership. By the end of the year, Shopee Pay and S Pay Later will be available on the Stripe Business Network across Southeast Asia, so thank you for that. This is really great news. This is very exciting. Yeah, it's very exciting.
We've been wanting to do more partnering together, so this is a great way because this will, S Pay Later, will be the first buy now, pay later option we'll have across the Stripe platform in all of Southeast Asia. So more growth ahead, so thank you for that. Thank you, thank you. Very exciting. Okay, we couldn't do a fireside chat without talking about AI. We have to squeeze this in. But Forrest, I know you're leaning in heavily, you're focused on transforming your business, transforming experiences for your users, but where are you starting to see the most actual tangible results so far? Where do you see growth as a result of investing in AI? Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.
I'm happy to give some several examples across our business and the by the end of the year, Shopee Pay and S Pay Later will be available on the Stripe Business Network across Southeast Asia, so thank you for that. This is really great news. This is very exciting. Yeah, it's very exciting. We've been wanting to do more partnering together, so this is a great way because S Pay Later will be the first buy now, pay later option we'll have across the Stripe platform in all of Southeast Asia. So, more growth ahead, so thank you for that.
Thank you, thank you. Very exciting. Okay, we couldn't do a fireside chat without talking about AI. We have to squeeze this in, but Forrest, I know you're leaning in heavily. You're focused on transforming your business, transforming experiences for your users, but where are you starting to see the most actual tangible results so far? Where do you see growth as a result of investing in AI? Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.
I'm happy to give several examples across our business, and probably you have heard other companies talk about similar cases before, but I'd just love to mention things. For example, customer service. We have millions of orders every day. Again, there is always, you can always write to me, right? This is one thing for customer service: a lot of emails. Yes, yeah. And still, a majority of customer service is handled by a dedicated customer service team. Over time, we realized actually the chat bot enabled by AI, the satisfaction rate is very, very high. It is as high as the person, similar. Yes.
It's whatever you buy, if you have any questions, there's always a customer service channel, and you can have a conversation, have a chat. I guess most of the chat is enabled today by AI. Right.
So we launched this very, very carefully because, by the end of the day, it's nothing about the cost. We want to make sure people are happy, and this is more efficient. So we always do A/B tests before we roll out any such services, and the thing is that today, more than 80% of customer inquiries are 100% handled by AI, and the satisfaction rate is even higher than the people doing customer service. But we heard a lot of stories across industries, different businesses. This has been a very, very clear use case. I think another one is quite, we all see that, is coding efficiency. Mm-hmm.
It's very, very important, but I also want to give two other examples. I find it fascinating. We operate a video game. We develop our own mobile games, and today we develop and operate the largest mobile game in the world called Free Fire, so you can download it from App Store or Google Play on your phone. Every day, more than 100 million people from all over the world play this game.
So we continually also develop new features and new games, and so far we have seen a very, very big change in terms of how game development is being impacted by AI. The first thing is, in the past, you needed to generate a lot of art. You needed to have a big group of artists to generate concepts, and then they draw, and then you pick the things you like, and you final-touch it.
Most of the time, we outsource this part of the basic job. We only have our senior artists do the final touch, but now the entire outsourcing work is pretty much done by AI. You just think about it, you just describe to AI what you are thinking about, what the art will look like, what will be the style, what will be the character. Mm-hmm. I think AI can help generate a lot. Is it making the non-player characters more intelligent too? Are they able to have— This part is that we just talked about the art. Okay, we just talked about the art.
Yeah, and also it's the same as you mentioned. I don't know how many people here are gamers. Every time, if you go to play a new game, most of the time you feel you are playing with other human people, but actually, as a new gamer, there's a high chance you are going to play with a bot because we want to make sure new gamers have a good boarding experience. If they immediately match against some very experienced gamers, they're going to crash very badly and they leave the game. Yeah, they leave the game.
They turn from the game with the bot. So this has been, even before AI, you always had a bot to play to help you understand, become familiar, build up confidence. But before AI, the bot was not smart enough. After a while, you'll figure out this is another, another people you are playing against. So that is also not a great experience for gamers. But today, actually, the bot is very, very smart. It's really, really very hard to tell the difference, and that has become a very, very useful tool for us. As I mentioned, Free Fire, every day there's more than 100 million people playing the game, and it's a great game. If you play as a team game, you play as a team. You can choose to play as a solo player, but you can also choose to play as a team. It's much, much more fun if you play as a team. But we look at our player base, and still almost half of the players have been playing the game, they enjoy the game, but they only play solo. They never really reach out to other people and say, let's play together or let's team up together. So now, with this bot feature, we pair them with the bot. If you are anti-social, you're a little bit nerdy, you don't want to reach out to other people, at least you pair with a bot and then you're on a team-based play. Then it's a way to encourage people to actually have much more fun with this game and to encourage them to have more social interaction with other gamers, other players in the community.
Those are great, great examples. Okay, the time has flown by, but I have some fun questions I want to ask you. You run a multibillion-dollar company, and yet you decided to become president of the Football Association of Singapore, and you own the Lion City Sailors. Any fans out there? Yeah, all right. Now, most CEOs pick up golf on the side, and you picked up the national sport of Singapore. Tell us about your passion for football.
Yeah, I mean, it's a passion, and I grew up having a lot of great memories between myself and my parents, my family, my friends. We always talked about football, played football together, went to a match together, so this has been a big part of my life. I think one downside of being an entrepreneur is along the journey, you pretty much have to give up all your hobbies. You just don't have any time for anything else. You have to be 100% focused. So along the way, I realized I lost interest or lost track of most of the other things. Somehow, naturally, football is always there.
When I realized, I started to appreciate that when I go to a football match, or even just watch in front of the TV, for that 90 minutes, it's a kind of rest for my brain. That is the only way I don't have to think about the business, don't have to think about all the challenges, and I can be fully enjoying it. It's become a great experience for me. I think this is the personal part, and I think when we think about how we want to spend our time, spend our life, focus on what you really enjoy is very, very important. So I know if I pick up golf, maybe it helps me on the business side. I can get to know more CEOs, right? And then if you cut some deals by playing golf. But I think football matters a lot to me.
Along the way, over the years, I also learned actually this matters to a lot of people. First, start from Singapore. I remember I always had conversations when I took taxis, and we talked about football with the taxi driver, and everybody, number one, cared about it, and number two, they always talked about Singapore football 20 years ago. So if you keep talking about 20 years ago, you will keep talking about 20 years ago forever. Then why not try to do something and try to make a change? Actually, I've been in this role for one and a half years. This reminds me a lot of the early days of building the company, kind of the startup stage. People don't believe it. You talk to people, they say, okay, this will never work. This hasn't worked for 20 years. But I think for me, the conviction is I see that people care about it.
start from Singapore and I remember I always have a conversation when I took taxis and we talk about football with the taxi driver and everybody, a number one, they care about it and the number two is they always talk about Singapore football 20 years ago so yeah so if you keep talking about 20 years ago you will be talk 20 20 keep talking about 20 years ago forever and things like yeah then now why why we try to do something and try to make the change and actually I've been in this role for one half year this remind me a lot of early days of the building the company, the start
of the stage people don't believe it talk to people say okay this will never work this has been work it hasn't been worked for 20 years and but I think for me the conviction is I see that people care about it and there's a lot of emotion and when you have the a game so a week ago when the Singapore national team played Thailand and in Jalan Basah stadium is a full house and everybody wear the national team jersey the right color and the cheer and the thing and even we lost that game and after the game nobody left everybody still showed support the cheer for the team I think to me that matters a lot in today's world it's getting crazy we have
so much difference between ourselves right even in Singapore context there is different races different religion and different political views and people love AI hate AI so there's so much differences but at least for that 19 minutes as much as you are Singaporean you cheer everybody cheer for the same team share the same emotion and the people next to you will be is your best buddy for that 19 minutes and this two person will never have anything in common out of that stadium but that 19 minutes they are going to hug each other they they they laugh together they cry together yeah I think we all need those human touch and the human part and
this is a very very important part of memories if there's anybody share the same conviction same belief and want to contribute to singapore football please also send me an email yes i love the fact that he was describing this new association that you're leading as the startup that same mindset of people will say you can't do it people will say it's been tried before but forrest i wouldn't bet against you i would not bet against you what do you think it's going to be incredible to see that league and your teams grow and i can't wait to wear the jersey sometime okay let's this is kind of an interesting question because so many people here in this audience are
founders they're running startups they're trying to create the next generation of growth in singapore and southeast asia what is your advice you've given a lot of great ideas today but any specific advice to help them keep going and be successful yeah actually i realize you you you you just very rightly point point of that out it is this is it's very very important just to keep going in the world's opinion so i over the years people always ask me hey what is it what is your secret sauce and what is i've done differently to have some success i've been keep asking myself that question as well and
actually very recently when i reflect my journey i realized one thing maybe it's a little bit special about myself about the journey is across the entire journey and there's a lot of ups and downs we can spend another hour just to tell you how terrible it is along the journey there's multiple times the company maybe you don't see the hope you're seeing in the dark and so many many challenges and a lot of things out of your control but i realized along the entire journey there's never any single moment this is truly from bottom of my heart i think about giving up and i never i never have that kind of
thoughts in my mind i don't know i think this is maybe it's just my character and this is where is it just happen naturally but i do feel as long as you have that aspiration you have that conviction yourself and whatever the challenge in your face and there is always a way right and then sometimes you just keep going and stay around hanging there the problem sometimes even just solve by itself and but the very important thing is just trust yourself believe yourself and never never give up and along the way and also as we shared one of our core value is also stay humble and being adaptive i think as long as you keep the
journey and you navigate around all the challenges and eventually when you're looking back you'll see all those moments it's very very critical and play a very important role in your success never give up never give up and i got chills when he said that i think it's so true well forrest on behalf of everyone in this room and the broader internet economy of southeast asia thank you so much for sharing your insights at stripe we're honored to be a partner and look forward to amazing growth ahead thank you thing. Like this is we start to think about we should offer them a credit and for them to buy things on Shopee and this could be a mutual beneficial later on we realized
actually the reason for that is also because of compared to Indonesia Vietnam Philippines compared to the western market simply because of the credit card penetration is very very low so in the very high penetration credit card market and this credit consumption credit needs probably can be met by the credit card but it's not really the case in our market even today things like Indonesia say for example the credit card penetration is probably still below 20% so most of the people don't have easy access to credit card either they have to delay their purchase or for late payment for the school fees or the medical needs or any family needs or they have to borrow the money
from the shark loan like things very high interest so for that business we have to start to explore with the credit when they buy things on Shopee and later on when we see the credit score when we know everybody better we start to lend them so they can spend the money for anything right and later on we also expand to offline as pay later the things like today that business grow very well and just to give everybody a sense it's like at this moment we have over $10 billion loan book so it's like we land out throughout ourselves land out over $10 billion and at this moment there's about 50 million people have outstanding credit with us so if you do the math it's about $200
per person so I think again so in the Singapore setting maybe $200 yeah it's just not much but it's like for a lot of people in our market and this makes a huge difference to their daily life and we're very fortunate we figured out a way we can land at such a big scale to have so many people to benefit from these credit facilities and at the same time it's also build it as a sustainable business think about that $10 billion to 50 million people enabling better lives growing businesses to a need that has long been there long been there okay so on that note I just want to reemphasize how excited we are at Stripe with the partnership
by the end of the year Shopee Pay and S Pay Later will be available on the Stripe Business Network across Southeast Asia so thank you for that this is really great news this is very exciting yeah it's very exciting we've been wanting to do more partnering together so this is a great way because this will S Pay Later will be the first buy now pay later option we'll have across the Stripe platform in all of Southeast Asia so more growth ahead so thank you for that
thank you thank you very exciting okay we couldn't do a fireside chat without talking about AI we have to squeeze this in but forrest I know you're leaning in heavily you're focused on transforming your business transforming experiences for your users but where are you starting to see the most actual tangible results so far where do you where do you see growth as a result of investing in AI sure sure sure sure I'm happy to give some like several examples across our business and the
probably you have heard any other company talk about the similar case before but I just love to mention things for example the customer service we have like millions of orders every day again like a there is a there is a there is you can always write to me right this is a one thing for the customer service a lot of emails yes yeah and still like a majority the customer service is a is a is a handled power dedicated customer service a team over the time we realize actually the like a sort of chat bot enabled by by AI the satisfaction rate is very very high is it as high as the in
you know it's like a person similar yes it's like a like a like a whatever the like a whatever you buy you have any questions like there's always a kind of a customer service a channel and you can you have a conversation have a chat I guess the most of the chat is enabled today is a by by AI right so we launched this very very carefully because by the end of the day it's nothing about the cost whatever is that we want to make sure people are happy and this is a more efficient so we always do a B test before we roll out any
such a services and that the things that today is more than 80% of the customer inquiries 100% handled by AI and the satisfaction rate is a is a is a is a even higher than the human yeah the like the people doing the doing the customer service but this is a we heard a lot of stories across the industries different businesses this has been a very very clear use case uh I think another one is a is a quite a we all see that is on the coding for the coding efficiency
mm-hmm it's it's it's very very important but I also want to give like a uh uh well two other examples is it's a it's a just a I find it fascinating uh so we we operate a video game we develop our own mobile games and today we run the we develop and operate the largest mobile game in the world called Free Fire so uh you can download it from App Store or like a like a Google Play on your phone and every day there's more than 100 million people from all over the world play this game
um so uh like we continually also develop the new features and the new games and uh so far we have seen a very very big change in terms of the uh how the game development uh being uh impacted by by the by the AI uh first thing is like uh in the in the past you need to generate a lot of art you need to to have a a big group of artists and to generate a concept and then the draw and then you pick the things you you like and you you you you you you final touch it
and uh most of the time we we we we we all source this a part of a basic job we only have our senior artists do the final touch and but this is now the entire the all sourcing work is pretty much done by by AI you just you just think about you just describe to AI what you what you what you are thinking about the arts will be look like what will be the style what will be the character mm-hmm I think AI can help generate a lot and uh is uh is it making the non-player characters more intelligent too are they able to have
this part is that we just talk about the arts okay we just talk about the arts yeah and and also it's the same as yeah as you you you mentioned this and uh I don't know how many people here uh a gamer like uh every time if you you you I mean I'm telling a little secret of the game development is uh you you you go to play a new game and most of the time you feel you are playing with another human
human people but actually as a new gamer high chance you are going to play with a bot because it's a we want to make sure uh the new gamers have a good boarding experience if they immediately match against some very experienced gamers they're going to crash very badly and they leave the game yeah they leave the game they turn from the game with the bot so this has been even before AI you always have a bot to play to help you understand understand that familiar build up the confidence but before AI the bot is not smart enough after a while you'll figure out this is another
is another another people you are playing against so that is also not a great experience for gamers but today actually uh the bot is very very smart it's really really very hard to to tell the to tell the to tell the difference and uh that is become a very very useful tool for us as I mentioned uh free fire every day there's more than 100 million people play the game and it's a great game if you play as a team game you play as a team you can choose to play as a solo player but you can also choose to play as a team it's a much much more fun if you play as a team but we we look at our player base
like still almost half of the players they have been playing the game they enjoy the game but they only play solo they never really reach out to other people say let's play together or let's team up together so and then now with this a bot feature we just uh pair with them with the bot if you are kind of a you are anti-social you're a little bit nerdy you don't want to reach out to other people at least you you pair with a bot
you're not a bot for the way to be able to reach out to other players and then you're not a team based play and then it's a way to encourage people to actually be much more fun of this game and to encourage to have them have a more social interaction with the other other gamers other players in the community those are great great examples okay the time has flown by but I have I have some fun questions I want to ask you you run a multi-billion dollar company and yet you decided to become president of the football association of Singapore
and you own the Lion City sailors any fans out there yeah all right now most CEOs pick up golf on the side and you picked up the national sport of Singapore tell us about your passion for football yeah yeah I mean it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a passion and I grew up having always a lot of a great memory between I myself and my my my parents my like my family my my friends is like always a talk about the football play football together go to a match together so this has been a big part of my my life and uh uh I think one one downside of being
entrepreneur is like uh along the journey you pretty much have to give up all your hobbies it's like uh you just just don't have any time for anything else you have to be 100% focused so along the way I realized I I lost the interest or lost the kind of I lost the track for most of the other things uh somehow naturally uh football is always there and uh when there's a I realized I start to appreciate it's like when when I'm a kind of a go to a football match or even just a watch in front of the tv and for that 90 minutes uh it's a kind of a rest for my brain so that is the only way I don't have to think about the business how to think about all the challenges
and I can be fully enjoying and it's become a yeah a great experience for me and so I mean I think this is the the personal part and I think uh when we think about how we want to spend our time spend our life uh like focus on what you really what you really enjoy is very very important so I know if like uh I pick up a golf maybe it's a help me on the business side I can get to know more CEOs right and then if you cut some deals by playing golf but I think it's like uh yeah uh football is a is a uh matters a lot to me and along the way so over the years I also learned actually this is a matters to uh a lot of people and uh uh yeah so first
start from uh Singapore and I remember I always have a conversation when I took taxis and we talk about football with the taxi driver and everybody like a number one they care about it and the number two is like they always talk about Singapore football 20 years ago so uh yeah so if you keep talking about 20 years ago you will be talk 20 20 keep talking about 20 years ago forever and things like uh yeah then now why why we try to do something and try to make the change and actually I've been in this role for uh one half year this is a remind me a lot of early days of the building the company kind of the start
of the stage people don't believe it talk to people say okay this will never work this has been work it hasn't been worked for 20 years and but I think for me the conviction is um I see that people care about it and uh and there's a lot of emotion and when you have the a game so uh like a like a week ago when the Singapore national team played uh Thailand and uh in in Jalan Basah stadium is a is a full house and uh everybody wear the like the national team jersey the right color and the chair and the thing and even we lost that game and after the game nobody left everybody still kind of showed support the chair for
the team uh i think it's like uh to me that matters a lot in today's world is it's getting crazy we have so much difference between ourselves right even in Singapore context there is a there's a different races different religion and the different political views and like uh and people like uh like uh love ai hate ai so there's so much differences but at least for that 19 minutes as much as you are Singaporean you cheer everybody cheer for the same team share the same emotion and the uh the people next to you will be is is your best buddy for that 19 minutes and this two person will never have anything
in common out of that stadium but that 19 minutes they are going to hug each other they they they laugh together they cry together yeah i think we all need those uh uh uh human touch and the human part and uh this is a very very important uh part of uh memories if there's anybody share the same conviction same belief and want to contribute to singapore football please also send me an email yes i love the fact that he was describing you know this new association that you're leading as the startup like that same mindset of people will say you can't do it people will say it's been tried before but uh
forrest i wouldn't bet against you i would not bet against you what do you think it's going to be incredible to see that league and your teams grow and uh i can't wait to wear the jersey sometime okay let's um this is kind of an interesting question because so many people here in this audience are founders they're running startups they're trying to create the next generation of growth in singapore and southeast asia what is what is your advice you've given a lot of great ideas today but any specific advice to help them keep going and be successful yeah i mean actually i i realize you you you you just
very rightly point up point of that out uh it is the this is it's very very important just to keep going in the world's opinion so uh i i like uh over the years people always ask me hey what is it what is your secret sauce and what is i've done like uh differently to to have some like a success uh i've been keep asking myself that question as well and uh uh actually very recently when i reflect my journey i realized one thing maybe it's a little bit special uh about myself about the journey is across the uh across the entire journey and uh there's a lot of ups and downs uh we can spend another hour just to
uh tell you how terrible it is like a along the journey there's a multiple times the company maybe you don't see the hope you're seeing like in the dark and uh so many many challenges and a lot of things out of your control but i realized along the entire journey there's a never any single moment uh this is truly from bottom of my heart i think about giving up and i i never i never have that the kind of a thoughts uh in my mind um i don't know i think this is maybe it's just a my character and uh and this is a where is it just happen naturally but i do feel as long as you have that the aspiration you have that
conviction yourself and the whatever the challenge in your face and there is always a way right and then sometimes you just keep going and stay around hunting there the problem sometimes even just a soft by itself or like and uh but the the very important thing is just uh uh trust yourself believe yourself and never never give up and along the way and also as we shared like one of our core value is uh and also stay like a like stay humble and uh and being adaptive i think it's like uh uh as long as you keep the journey and you navigate around all the challenges and eventually uh when you're looking back you'll see
all those moments like uh it's very very critical and and play a very important role in your success never give up never give up and i i got chills when he said that i i think it's so true well forrest um on behalf of everyone in this room and the broader uh internet economy of southeast asia thank you so much for sharing your insights um at stripe we're honored to be a partner and look forward to amazing growth ahead thank you