Sea Ltd. is shutting its main e-commerce operation in India just months after its October launch, blaming market uncertainty for scuppering one of its more promising overseas endeavours.
Sea, part-owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd., will be shuttering Shopee India from March 29, though it will continue to handle orders placed before then and support local merchants during the transition. Its other global operations are unaffected, Shopee said in a statement. Sea fell more than 9% in pre-market trading in New York.
The shutdown is another setback for Singapore-based Sea, which has lost two-thirds of its value since an October peak as investors scrutinized its growth prospects. An exit from the e-commerce market of India, a country of about 1.3 billion people, became more likely after its government targeted Sea’s gaming unit, its other main arm, earlier this year.
