Vietnamese baby estore Taembe drinks seed funding from Swiss sippy cup

Earlier today, Vietnamese online retailer and marketplace Taembe announced it closed a seed funding round of US$228,000 led by Swiss Founders Fund. The round was joined by Binh Tran, co-founder and former CTO of Klout, and Eddie Thai, a local startup advisor who spent time working with Fortune 500 companies and an international syndicate of angel investors.

The site launched in April 2013. This year, Taembe and e-shopping discovery app Wiindi became the first Vietnamese startups to graduate from JFDI.Asia’s accelerator program. Taembe started out selling diapers and other baby products directly to customers and recently expanded its offering to include detergents and other home consumables. The business claims to be approaching profitability with monthly revenue growth of 20 percent this year.

“Swiss Founders Fund was the ideal choice for us because its partners know how to build sustainable businesses in Southeast Asia,” says CEO Don Phan, who previously held managing director positions at Rocket Internet’s Zalora and Foodpanda in Vietnam. Don adds that he originally came up with the idea for Taembe in Vietnam after shopping for groceries with his wife. The couple noticed a young mother struggling to drive a motorbike while holding her baby and large packs of diapers. From there, the idea for a diaper delivery service was born.

Taembe team

See: Bilna gets funding to give Indonesia’s babies more love and diapersVietnam is becoming an increasingly attractive place to build tech businesses. According to the Taembe team, in addition to strong talent development, the country’s population is pushing 100 million people, with 1.5 million babies born every year and 64 percent of the population under the age of 35. 12 percent of households in Vietnam have children below the age of one. According to a recent Nielson report, 19 percent of consumers in Vietnam have children between the ages of one and two in their household. The global average is around nine percent.

Locally, Taembe competes with big boys like Lazada Vietnam, which also has a section for babies and motherhood. It’s also still up against fellow baby ecommerce sites like Be Yeu, Liulo, and Shop Tre Tho. Regional players like Bilna in Indonesia and Bakipa in Singapore may also have their eyes on Vietnam’s favorable demographics.

“We’ve been following developments in Vietnam closely and we believe the baby market is a winner-take-most market. Taembe has the most traction and is the most likely to win the market,” claims Patrick Degen, partner at Swiss Founders Fund.