A fast-growing Vietnamese ecommerce site is leaping into education

In August 2018, ecommerce platform Sendo bagged US$51 million in a series B funding round led by Japanese financial services giant SBI Group.

Since then, the Vietnam-based startup has been busy. Realizing that a lot of people living in second- and third-tier cities want goods from brands that haven’t set up shop in their areas, it launched business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplace SenMall in September 2018.

SenMall now connects its customers to over 2,000 international brands like consumer product titans Unilever and Procter & Gamble as well as electronics firm Oppo and appliance maker Braun.

Six months after the fundraise, Tech in Asia caught up with Sendo CEO Tran Hai Linh to find out what his company has in store for 2019 and to get an update on the company’s goal of hitting US$1 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in 2020.

End of the beginning

Vietnam’s ecommerce scene is on the rise. The market has been thriving at a compound annual growth rate of 38%, with GMV hitting US$2.8 billion in 2018 and set to grow to US$15 billion by 2025, according to a recent report by Google and Temasek.

Perhaps that’s why the playing field is getting crowded. Aside from Sendo, some of the biggest players include Lazada, Shopee, as well as local competitors like Tiki. However, while Sendo’s resources might pale in comparison to what the international giants have, its ability to focus all its money on just one market is an advantage.

Linh, too, is optimistic. “I believe that we are at the end of the beginning,” he explains. “This year will be an inflection point. The market will grow much faster, we will see sizable businesses [becoming] comparable to regional players [and] customers becoming more familiar with ecommerce.” According to Linh, even though only 3% of all current retail is ecommerce-based, people are getting more comfortable with buying things off the internet.

Tran Hai Linh, CEO and co-founder; Nguyen Dac Viet Dung, chairman; Nguyen Phuong Hoang, deputy CEO / Photo credit: Sendo

And with the ecommerce boom comes development in logistics as well. Linh noted how significant sums of money have been invested in Vietnam’s logistics capabilities and how “people are talking about” instant deliveries and warehousing as well as fulfillment and sorting centers.

“It is much more sophisticated now,” he elaborates. And despite not having its own fleet, Sendo is doing instant deliveries by partnering with Grab.

Vietnam, however, is lagging behind its regional neighbors in terms of payment. Linh estimated that about 70% of all transactions in the country continue to be done via cash on delivery – a rate higher than the average for Southeast Asia.

Linh thinks that this is because, so far, consumers in Vietnam have yet to be presented with good-enough reasons to use e-payments in Vietnam. “But we believe Sendo provides people with the best use case to use ecommerce. So if ecommerce grows faster and bigger, then there will be a lot more changes in terms of payment,” he adds.

Surpassing its GMV goal

Targeting online learners