Letter to readers: Vietnam’s B2B ecommerce sector is hard to ignore

Dear reader,

Recently, I enrolled my four-year-old in a Chinese enrichment class.

What impressed me about the program – beyond the insane word of mouth – was how it created video-based teaching materials that kept my son hooked – he wanted to watch them again and again.

It’s a reminder that scale matters in business: The program has expanded into multiple centers across Singapore and could therefore invest in standardized and high-quality revision material.

Scale matters too in the David versus Goliath battle that’s raging in Vietnam’s B2B ecommerce sector.

Can Telio get large enough to build an impregnable fortress? Or can local conglomerate Vingroup take advantage of its infrastructure – spanning real estate, retail, and services – to build a B2B ecommerce arm with staying power?

It’s a development that we’ll be tracking as things unfold.

In other stories, we mapped out Alibaba and Tencent’s growing tentacles in Southeast Asia.

While these Chinese firms have been expanding their influence in Southeast Asia, I suspect they haven’t really figured out everything just yet. Alibaba has big battles to fight at home, and Tencent seems content to reap the returns of being a minority shareholder.

We also discussed whether Ovo will complicate a Gojek-Tokopedia merger. Experts we spoke to believe that should the merger move forward, Tokopedia might have to give up its stake in Ovo in favor of GoPay.

Next, we looked at how an upstart consumer hardware startup in India is giving Chinese giants a run for their money. While BoAt has built a strong following in its native country, its greatest challenge, global expansion, lies ahead.

Finally, back on the topic of education, my positive experience with the Chinese enrichment class has certainly given me a firsthand understanding of how edtech and interactive lessons can benefit students.

Edtech is not a cure-all, however, and it will need to do some soul-searching as it powers ahead. A blended approach involving offline learning is probably the best way forward.