Kaidee, Thailand's largest consumer-to-consumer marketplace platform, is expanding its online space in property and farming products to boost its rural user base.
The move aims to maintain its revenue growth of 2.5 times in 2018.
"We have 35 million users and 1 million visits per day. Our goal is to reach 10 million visits per day as soon as possible," said Tiwa York, chief executive of Kaidee.
Last year Kaidee tallied 100 billion baht in sales through its platform, increasing 20% from 2016.
The company embraced machine learning and image recognition technology to help users post products in the proper category, of which there are 264. Technology also helps them reduce duplicated products and detect scams, which total 0.01% of posts.
Kaidee has customer service staff and free consultants to help vendors make sales faster.
Mr Tiwa said Kaidee will target more vertical categories that underserve the market. In the second quarter, it will launch Farmkaidee, a section for agricultural products. There are 40 million workers in the agricultural sector, of which 4.2 million are farmers who can be empowered by access to technology.
In March, the company will enhance the features for its property section to make it more accessible to those who are looking for property.
"Widening into a sub-brand marketplace like Rodkaidee for personal vehicles and Mocykaidee for motorbikes enables us to increase revenue," said Mr Tiwa. The company plans to expand into commercial vehicles such as pickups, trucks, tractors, and cranes.
In 2017, over 1.85 million items were sold on Kaidee, valued at over 100 billion baht from 12 million product listings. This means 5,065 items were sold every day.
To date 50% of its users have accessed the service via a mobile application.
The most-visited categories are RodKaidee, MocyKaidee, property, mobile and tablets, and auto parts. Auto parts has ranked among the top five categories for the first time, replacing amulets. Auto parts and accessories will be the next market to be vertically integrated.
Kaidee's top searches in 2017 were PCX, MSX, Adidas, Coach and Baan Chao (rental homes).
Launched in May 2017, RodKaidee was visited over 60 million times, with 5 million visits each month.
This vertical marketplace attracted over 800,910 car listings, of which 132,752 were sold, valued at over 38.5 billion baht. Its top five searched terms were 4WD, rod krada (pickups), rod too (vans), coupes and Honda's CR-V.
MocyKaidee, the vertical market for motorcycles, attracted 42 million visits in 2017 -- 3.6 million visits per month. There were 394,659 new listings of motorcycles, of which 102,170 motorcycles were sold.
Mr Tiwa said the company expects to achieve 2.5 times revenue growth in 2018 and break even in 2019. In 2017, its revenue grew by 144%, with 60% from paid services or value-added services, and 40% from advertising, to which motorbike and property make up the bulk.