How roll-ups are adapting to sluggish ecommerce growth

More: The secrets behind Temu's rapid rise and Ant Group’s mammoth R&D splurge. [Read from your browser]( Daily Newsletter --------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to Tech in Asia's free Daily Newsletter! Get full access to our subscribers-only Daily Newsletter and other insightful analysis on the big and messy topics of Asia’s tech and startup community by [registering here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- IN FOCUS In today's newsletter, we spotlight: - [How roll-ups have adapted to the turning tides of ecommerce]( - The layoffs and reorganization of GoTo’s consumer lending team in India - Other newsy highlights such as the secrets behind Temu's rapid rise and Ant Group’s mammoth R&D splurge --------------------------------------------------------------- Hello {NAME} “There’s a ‘Game of Thrones’ vibe around this entire industry,” Juozas Kaziukenas, CEO of Marketplace Pulse, a firm which tracks ecommerce aggregators, told Bloomberg last month. Fans of the HBO superhit series would know that’s not a good thing - there’s a lot of drama waiting to unfold and blood to be shed. In 2021, investors poured over US$12 billion into this new breed of startups that emerged from the shadows of ecommerce pioneer Amazon. With a focus on acquiring sellers on the US giant’s third-party marketplace, roll-ups rose to prominence following the seismic consumer shift to online buying during Covid-19 lockdowns. These firms went on a debt-fueled splurge. For instance, Thrasio, the nascent industry’s poster child, snapped up more than 200 brands. But the "spray and pray type of investing," as Neso Brands CEO Bjorn Bergstrom puts it in today's featured piece, is no longer in vogue. Funding has mostly dried up for these aggregators as cooling ecommerce sales led to a punishing 2022. While the signs increasingly point toward consolidation as a means of survival, today’s premium story also explores the sluggish pace of acquisitions and the different ways these roll-ups have responded to the ecommerce slowdown -- Shravanth  ---------------------------------------------------------------  THE BIG STORY [Roll-ups 2.0: Changing winds prompt shifts in ecommerce aggregator model]( Under the Aggregator 2.0 model, firms will have to prove they can grow without resorting to simply buying up brands. --------------------------------------------------------------- TRENDING NEWS [GoTo shuts down Pune office in India, slashing 30 jobs]( The company said the move is part of a strategic reorganization of its consumer lending team. [Why TikTok, Shopee, and Lazada are following in Temu’s footsteps]( Temu’s rapid rise has forced its more established competitors to take notice of the company’s “all-inclusive” version of the consignment model. [Prenetics hires ex-Fave boss to lead consumer DNA testing arm]( Joel Neoh recently stepped down as CEO of Fave, a fintech firm he co-founded in 2015. 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