Taembe, Vietnam’s Diapers.com, gets funding to take on baby goods e-commerce in Vietnam

Taembe, the Vietnamese version of Diapers.com just got a a nice undisclosed amount (purportedly six figures) of funding to grow its business. The funder is a local Vietnamese person. Since the startup first came onto the scene in April this year, the startup has been seeing steady growth. This new cash influx will be used to hire “developers and other stuff, including marketing.”

According to Tomo Huynh, the CTO, things have been going well for the fledgling startup:

Since April, we have gained traction in daily orders, increased traffic while reducing cost, optimized the conversion rate, and enabled online payment methods like bank transfer and credit/debit cards. We’ve also started getting expat orders.

At the moment, e-commerce in Vietnam is in a dubious place, with big folks like Lazada and Zalora steamrolling the general e-commerce market, and daily deals sites amongst the only e-commerce models that are still seeing consistent scalable growth. With general e-commerce, it’s hard to compete. The big guys with big money can just guarantee way more inventory, and with daily deals, it’s a compelling discount model that doesn’t have huge warehouse overheads but can still offer a huge array of goods. Thus, one area that is compelling to tackle is e-commerce verticals. Baby goods are one such vertical, and it’s especially compelling since women have the purchasing power in the family.

Taembe is currently not the only site in this space. There’s also Project Lana’s Be Yeu, Liu Lo, Shop Tre Tho, and Vit Donald, just to name a few. Be Yeu and Liu Lo have both been in the market for much longer, and Be Yeu is also backed heavily by IDG Ventures, with a huge team. Thus, in contrast, Taembe’s approach has been bootstrapped and focused. While all of the e-commerce sites above offer a plethora of baby goods, Taembe is focused specifically on diapers, with the other goods as an additive. This plays to SEO strengths as well as aids the startup with economics of scale. No wonder it’s interesting for investors.

In the near future, the startup is not really looking to attack markets outside of Vietnam, according to Tomo:

We have plenty of room left to play in Vietnam, even within Saigon itself. Vietnam is a great market and one we know and understand well.

(Editing by Steven Millward)