SBC: e-Commerce

Showing posts with label e-Commerce. Show all posts

Mar 1, 2013

Vietnam - SMEs reap fruits from e-commerce

VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have pointed out that more and more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) utilize e-commerce in doing business. They have also noted the increasingly high popularity of the e-marketplace.

KOS, the briefcase shop on Huynh Van Banh Street in Phu Nhuan district of HCM City launched the website valikep.vn in early August 2012.

At first, the website had a simple interface where the images of products, telephone numbers and the address of the shop were shown. Meanwhile, customers still could not place orders or make payment online.

After two months since the website was launched, KOS reportedly obtained the turnover of VND40 million, which meant that it could sell products to 20 customers and it nearly could not make profit.

Nguyen Khanh Duy, the owner of the shop, said at that time, he did not really pay attention to the sale via Internet. This was why valikeo.vn did not receive the appropriate attention. Duy, for example, did not spend money on optimizing the SEO – search engine optimization, a technique that allows putting the website on the top position in the Google’s list of search insults.

In October 2012, KOS decided to spend six million dong a month to apply SEO. And Duy has been very satisfactory about the business result. Since more customers know about KOS, the shop receives some 150 orders a month, while the turnover has jumped to VND200 million.

Banh My Viet (Viet bread) at banhmiviet.net, at first, did not spend much money on online marketing, because it thought it could take full advantage of the ad pieces it could post free of charge on some forums like Dia Diem An Uong, Otosaigon.com or hoclamgiau.vn.

However, the managers of the chain later realized that the marketing on the forums did not bring high efficiency. The free ad pieces on the forums just brought 10 percent of the total customers of the chain.

Le Van Cuong, the manager of Banh My Viet chain on Phan Xich Long Street in Phu Nhuan district, said that only one year after the chain’s debut, in October 2012, did the company have its own website and begin spending money on online marketing.

“Banh My Viet now cooperates with some websites which allow to place orders online such as Foodpanda.com, Vietnammm.com, Eat.vn, Chonmon.vn… The cooperation has brought big benefits to the shop chain,” he said.

The above said websites follow the policies which assume responsibility for the quality of the services of the providers they suggest to customers.

Cuong went on to say that nowadays, the shop can sell 1,000 loafs of bread, and most of the customers, the expats, place orders online.

Nguyen Kim Loan, Director of Festival center belonging to Festival travel firm, said the firm began selling tours via Internet in 2007.

Loan said the firm has been satisfactory about the business result, with the number of customers from online channel at relatively high level, accounting for 30 percent of the total clients and bring ¼ of the total turnover of Festival.

Having realized the important role of online marketing, Festival has decided to allocate a bigger budget for the work. Not only trying to do marketing via emails, Facebook and social networks, the firm has also spent money on Google Adword to make its website more easily found on Google’s search engine.

Experts said that if websites are considered the “head offices” of enterprises, hosting should be seen as the land plot for the head offices to be built on. Therefore, they said it would be better to use the hosting provided by international providers, for which they have to pay $100 a year. Meanwhile, in order to possess a Vietnamese domain name, one would have to pay VND830,000 a year.

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Jan 21, 2013

Vietnam - Groupon websites may be asked to pay deposits and take insurance policies

VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) is considering laying down a new policy, forcing groupon websites to pay a deposit and take insurance policies in order to protect consumers’ rights.

The new regulation is being considered by the watchdog agency after a big trouble occurred with Nhom Mua Company, running a groupon website, which once frightened customers.

On November 13, 2012, the Board of Directors of Nhom Mua had a press release informing the appointment of Kyle Pham into the post of the new Managing Director of Nhom Mua to replace Tom Tran.

After that, Nhom Mua informed the halt of operation in order to ensure the security of the database. Later, on December 11, 2012, Nhom Mua once more released a similar notice without warning on the website.

As such, just within one month, Nhom Mua halted its operation two times, while a lot of shops refused the vouchers issued by Nhom Mua, which then frightened customers.

The problem was only settled on December 24, when Nhom Mua officially announced the resumption of the groupon website after a period of reshuffling its workforce. No more troubles have occurred since then.

In late November 2012, after 20 partners came to the head office to ask for debt payment, Dealsoc, a groupon website also announced the operation halt due to the internal disagreement.

A senior executive of Hotdeal said though Nhom Mua’s trouble was sourced from the internal problem, the trouble still caused a shock to the groupon. Customers, who lost their confidence in groupon model, have become more hesitant to buy goods from similar websites. More seriously, foreign investors have stopped invested in e-commerce websites.

“Nhom Mua took a false step which led to the negative responses of consumers and badly influenced other groupon brands,” the executive said.

According to an e-commerce expert, the trouble of Nhom Mua has had big impacts on three main subjects, including consumers, product and service providers and foreign investors.

The purchasing power has been reported by groupon websites as decreasing by 10-20 percent after the trouble with Nhom Mua. It is expected that customers would still keep placing orders, but they would not make big purchases any more.

An executive from Hotdeal has noted that the boom of the groupon market is over, and it’s now the time for hotdeal and other websites to prepare for the big changes in the time to come. One of the most important tasks for the immediate period is to restore the confidence of customers.

“2013 would be a stormy year for the groupon model. It is very likely that after some other troubles occur, only a few big brands would still exist,” he said.

Nguyen Ngoc Diep, Director of Vatgia, which is running cucre.vn, has noted that the market has nearly got saturated that it is the time to think of other more suitable models. Cucre, for example, has become a website which provides thousands of kinds of goods at low prices, while it is no more a groupon website.

Diep has suggested that it would be better to ask groupon websites to pay a deposit and make payment every day in order to minimize risks.

Agreeing with Diep, Tran Huu Linh, Head of the E-commerce and Information Technology Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade has revealed that the department is considering setting up some requirements on groupon websites to protect customers’ benefits. They may be asked to pay a deposit or take insurance policies when doing that kind of business.

The requirements would be set up in the draft decree on e-commerce which is expected to be submitted to the Prime Minister in January 2013.

Buu Dien

Dec 18, 2012

Vietnam - E-commerce businesses in Vietnam face the risk of being acquired by foreigners

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese e-commerce businesses, while calling for foreign investments in their businesses, keep a constant anxiety that the foreign partners would swallow them one day.

Nguyen Hoa Binh, General Director of Peacesoft, said on Dau tu that in 2012, the last barriers for the e-commerce development were removed. The payment, shipping and deliveries problems have all been settled, thus making e-commerce transactions absolutely “online.” He believes this would pave the way for the boom of e-commerce in the near future.

However, Binh, like the owners of many other e-commerce websites, keep worrying that one day, their businesses might be taken over by foreigners.

To date, most of the well-known Vietnamese e-commerce firms, like Peacesoft, VC Corp, VTC Online, vatgia.com or VNG, have been living with the financial support from foreign partners. Will it happen that the foreign investors would acquire the Vietnamese e-commerce firms which they understand very well after a long period of cooperation?

A question may be raised that why Vietnamese e-commerce firms still open the doors to foreign partners, if they fear that they may be taken over one day by the foreign partners?

The answer is that Vietnamese firms now need the capital and technology support from foreign groups.

Binh said that in the first phase of the global economic integration, it was really a necessary thing to call for the investments from foreign powerful groups, because this would help expand the market and improve the competitiveness.

Peacesoft, for example, has been using the capital contributed by three foreign partners namely Softbank, IDG Ventures and ebay.com.

“The foreign partners, who have profuse capital experiences and high technologies, were believed to cooperate well with Vietnamese firms, which have deep knowledge about the domestic market,” Binh said.

However, Binh, when affirming the benefits Vietnamese e-commerce firms can enjoy with the presence of foreign partners, admitted that if businesses don’t take precautions, they may be taken over by foreign partners, and the initially Vietnamese owned would become non-Vietnamese later.

Agreeing with Binh, Nguyen Ngoc Diep, General Director of Vat Gia JSC, the owner of vatgia.com, said Vietnamese e-commerce firms would be swallowed if they depend too much on foreign partners.

Diep said foreign investors have been present in Vietnam since the very beginning of the e-commerce market. And once the Vietnamese e-commerce firms reach a certain development level, other foreign big guys would also jump on the bandwagon.

Most recently, Intel Capital and Duxton have officially announced the investments in VC Corp and VTC Online after the both reported satisfactory business results and cemented their firm positions on the market.

Duxton has contributed 10 million dollars n cash to join forces with IDG Ventures and VTC to become the three big shareholders of VTC Online.

Le Hong Minh, General Director of VNG, also said that Vietnamese firms have been bearing a hard pressure from foreign partners.

Google is now considered the best information transmission channel; therefore, when looking for the information about certain products or services, users would not access directly to the e-commerce websites, but would use Google as a searching engine.

Therefore, Minh said, services and product suppliers may choose Google for their cooperation projects instead of joining hands with Vietnamese e-commerce websites.

VnExpress has quoted a report by Visa International as saying that Vietnamese people now have got more familiar to e-commerce. 98 percent of polled people said they looked for information about products and services on Internet over the last 12 months.

Compiled by Thu Uyen

Dec 13, 2012

Vietnam - E-commerce: skipping Beta, marching towards 2.0 (Part 3)

VietNamNet Bridge – The words “taking off” or “in full swing” have not been used any more when talking about the prospect of e-commerce in Vietnam, because they were used many years ago and the predictions did not come true. However, people have every reason to expect a happy ending for the story about the e-commerce development in the country.

>> E-commerce: skipping Beta, marching towards 2.0 (Part 2)
>> E-commerce: skipping Beta, marching towards 2.0

Lazada, just after eight months of operation, has got 10 million customers in Vietnam. The noteworthy thing is that lazada.vn does not seek clients from the parent group’s partners, but it has been doing business independently, looking for its own partners and clients in the Vietnamese market.

Just after a short time, the brand has become the partner of many manufacturers who provide more than 9000 products.

The online retailer has had a large storehouse in Binh Tan district of HCM City, a big workforce (300 workers just serve Lazada), and continual marketing campaigns, which all are the redoubtable rivals to domestic enterprises.

While foreign brands have been trying to localize their marketing methods to get adapted to the conditions in Vietnam, domestic brands have been trying to upgrade their services to have the service models like the ones in developed countries.

PeaceSoft, which owns chodientu.vn, is considered the pioneer in the field. As for payment methods, PeaceSoft thinks of joining forces with Sacombank and CyberSource of VISA international card organization, becoming the first class international payment portal.

When customers buy products on chodientu.vn, they just have to enter the information about their cards (Visa, MasterCard, JCB…) one time into the e-wallet, and then log into the wallet accounts to make payment on the websites that accept the payments with Nganluong.vn, while no need to repeat the card information.

In terms of deliveries, PeaceSoft has joined forces with five express forwarding service providers, put shipchung.vn tool into operation, thus allowing the enterprises doing business on chodientu.vn using the services to receive and deliver goods.

With the heavy investment in all relevant services, experts say, all the links of a complete e-commerce process have been ready.

“In the near future, businesses would not only set up sale websites of their own, but also set up stalls on online trading floors to take full advantage of the large custom of the floors to advertise their products and seek partners,” said Nguyen Hoa Binh, General Director of PeaceSoft, when explaining why PeaceSoft decided to build up a close e-commerce process.

Businesses would see a lot of advantages when they open kiosks on trading floors. They would get support in advertisement tools such as SEO or Email Marketing, and they can run their ad pieces on the online ad network—Adnet. All would help them access potential clients.

Regarding the competition in the market, Nguyen Hoanh Tien, Deputy General Director of VNG, has noted that with the current small scale, the competition would be moderate and would not be too stiff in the immediate time, even with the presence of international groups in the Vietnamese market.

Nevertheless, the recent moves by the investors, both domestic and foreign, showed their determination to make profits from e-commerce and heat up the market.

According to the E-commerce and Information Technology Department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, 130 investors have registered the establishment of e-trading floors. Of these, the department has confirmed the registration for 35 websites. By the end of 2011, more than 1.5 million transactions on 30 websites have been reported, worth 4130 billion dong.

1 USD = 21,000 VND.

DNSG

Dec 7, 2012

Vietnam - E-commerce: skipping Beta, marching towards 2.0

VietNamNet Bridge - A series of investment projects in e-commerce have been kicked off, seemingly promising to heat up the market which remains cool despite the presence of the giant eBay.

Economists say, if comparing the competition among the rivals in the e-commerce market with a hurdle, the current stage of the race is not tough for enterprises with very few barriers. Therefore, the enterprises need to choose the solutions which allowing them running faster than the rivals.

VNG nurturing the 123 dream

In late October, VNG quietly set up a new business division – 123.vn, an e-commerce website that operates under the mode of B2C (business to customer). Just several days later, the upgraded version of 123mua.vn, a website operating under the mode of C2C (customer to customer), initially established in 2006, was also launched.

The move by VNG has been described as a general deployment by VNG in the e-commerce battlefield, the one which once witnessed the failure of many enterprises, including VNG.

When asked about the prospect of the e-commerce division, Deputy General Director of VNG Nguyen Hoanh Tien said in the past, enterprises had to cope with too many obstacles, but the barriers have been removed already.

Tien said that Vietnamese customers have changed their consumption habits and have got familiar to online shopping, which should be seen as the greatest advantage for e-commerce services to develop.

Not only office workers or students, who regularly work on computers, small merchants have begun learning about trade on Internet and seeking opportunities on e-commerce websites.

Meanwhile, in the current difficult conditions, businesses now tend to pay bigger attention to online distribution channels to cut down expenses. This gives one more reason to e-commerce businesses to hope about the development of the e-commerce market.

“E-commerce would be one of the three biggest components of our business in 2013. The total investment in the type of business would be 2.5 times higher than that in 2011,” Tien said.

On the launching of SohayPay, a payment instrument, both VC Corp and Techcombank said that e-commerce has been developing very strongly in Vietnam in recent years. About 1/3 of the 1700 surveyed businesses have turnover from e-commerce, making up 15 percent of the total revenue.

Hoang Ngoc Vy, General Director of Vien Thong A, a high technology production distribution chain, said the online distribution channel brings 10 percent of the chain’s total revenue.

Vy said Vien Thong A is making heavier investment in e-commerce, hoping that the revenue from online channels would increase by 50 percent in 2013, which means that 15 percent of total revenue would come from e-commerce.

Some years ago, eBay and Chodientu were the only two names in the e-commerce market. Meanwhile, there are numerous online markets which have been set up recently.

IDG Ventures Vietnam has announced the merger of two IT firms Nhom Mua (nhommua.com) and Dia Diem (diadiem.com) into MJ Group. The merger has been associated with the agreement on the 60 million dollar investment deal of IGD Ventures Vietnam, Rebate Networks, ru – Net Global into MJ Group in a plan to turn MJ into a big e-commerce group in Vietnam.

Sources say that though VC Corp owns six big e-commerce channels in Vietnam, it still plans to launch some 10 more products in the time to come.

A Cimigo’s report showed that 31 percent of Vietnamese people use Internet and 95 percent of them are aged between 15-24, who will be the main clients of the e-commerce market in the near future.

Investors have poured money into the e-commerce market, a very promising type of business. However, they would have to encounter big difficulties.

When deciding to spend money to develop online distribution channels, enterprises believe that the current conditions have become favorable enough to begin investments.

Ngo Quoc Dung, Director of Jodric, an advertisement firm, which is developing a series of e-commerce projects, including www.diathan.vn, said thanks to the boom of groupon websites, Vietnam’s e-commerce has made a big leap so far, while the habit of shopping online has been created.

However, there are always two sides of a coin. While groupon websites have made people get familiar with online shopping channels, they have made people believe that online distribution channels mostly launch “sale-up” campaigns. People also believe that the products sold on online channels do not have high quality, and people buy products on them because of the only reason that they are cheap.

Experts say the thought would put big difficulties for e-commerce enterprises in doing their business.

A common thing of all the e-commerce websites so far is that they have been run by small or medium enterprises. With the limited capability, the enterprises cannot scale up their investment to create a professional e-commerce environment.

Most of the enterprises still cannot join forces with others to provide relevant services, including forwarding services. Therefore, they still have to deliver goods themselves.

Everything we can see now shows the signs of the booming of e-commerce in the near future. Therefore, big enterprises have poured their money into e-commerce projects as a step to wait in front for the boom.

“It means that investors spend money now to get benefits later. Meanwhile, it is now still not the right time to reap fruits, even though Vietnam sewed the seed 10 years ago already,” Tien said.

The players in the market, who are they?

Experts believe that the in the immediate time, the market would be the playing field of the big names such as Zap.vn, Lazada, Zalora, Cho Dien Tu/eBay and 123.vn.

Zap.vn is still in the starting period, while Lazada and Zalora have cemented their positions in the market.

In February 2012, Gio Giai Lao Company Ltd was established, officially bringing Lazada and Zalora, the well-known online sale brands in South East Asia, into Vietnam.

Founded by the leading online retail group from Germany, Lazada (the domain name in Vietnam is www.lazada.vn), which has its own “formulas” to conquer the international market, has to apply specific methods to get adapted to the Vietnamese market.

Pham Que Anh, Brand Director of Lazada Vietnam, said the online retailer has been following a special way to conquer Vietnamese customers.

A survey by PayPal showed that 43 percent of polled Vietnamese consumers said they would not buy products online for fear of risks.

In general, Vietnamese people would not buy products until they can see with their eyes the products to have assessments about their quality. Meanwhile, the habit of making payment in cash remains an obstacle to e-commerce.

Therefore, Lazada Vietnam decided to go its way: it provides all the information about products, advertise products on Internet environment, but still allows customers to make payment after they receive products.

If customers are not satisfied with the products after they see them, lazada.vn would take back the products and charge no fee to customers.

The policy applied by lazada.vn which allows customers changing products within 14 days has helped persuade customers that they still can check the products with their eyes, like they do when making traditional shopping, while they do not have to spend too much time to go to shops.

DNSG

Dec 6, 2012

Cambodia - Cambodia's e-commerce struggles amid potential

It was only in July this year when German-owned internet start-up incubator Rocket Internet launched shop.com.kh in Cambodia, an online retail store selling electronics such as mobile phones, laptops and tablets.

Rocket Internet Cambodia co-founder Karl Seilern told the Post in July that the country’s growth in internet usage and the lack of competition in the e-commerce market were driving factors to enter Cambodia.

Seilern said the company planned to offer delivery in Siem Reap and Sihanoukville within the next few months.

But less than two months after its launch, shop.com.kh ceased business. Now their former office on Norodom is empty.

Rocket Internet Cambodia is not the only player to have struggled in the local e-commerce market, a type of business that, although having much potential for growth, still needs to establish itself in Cambodia.

“The majority [of e-commerce shops are] actually not really successful,” said Leng Chanprathna, CEO of thecareerocean.com.

Cambodia had more than 2.5 million people with internet access as of last month and the figure is expected to grow, officials at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications told the Post earlier this month.

The number of Facebook users in Cambodia is about 650,000, or about 4 per cent of the population, Leng Chanprathna said.

But according to the 2012 Media Index Survey from Indochina Research, only 7 per cent of internet users have used online shopping. The survey was conducted in five provinces among a sample of 1,103 people aged 15 to 50 in urban and semi-urban locations.

Seventy-four per cent used the internet for browsing, surfing and information, 69 per cent for MP3, video and picture downloads, 66 per cent for Facebook, 56 per cent for messaging and chatting and 45 per cent for games.

“Cambodian internet users are not in the habit of using the internet for online shopping yet,” Laurent Notin, general manager at Indochina Research said, adding that such habits will develop with time as users become more sophisticated.

But while e-commerce in the Kingdom still faces a number of challenges, it could succeed locally with an internet payment system and higher use of credit cards. “There’s only one reason why there’s no major e-commerce sites at the moment in Cambodia and that is because there is no good payment gateway,” said Ken White, managing director of Krawma Company, which owns the domains bongthom.com and lengpleng.com. “Once a payment gateway is implemented, then e-commerce will just absolutely take off here, because this has been needed for a number of years and nobody has taken it on.”

“I did set up a system similar to shop.com.kh. I did this back in about 2002 … You could order your products online and then you just pay on delivery. And yeah, I think it could have worked, but we just got too busy doing other things,” he said. “And I still think that something like that would work.”

According to Leng Chanprathna the market here is profitable. “But the business model here is different from advanced countries. Because here we live without online payment like PayPal,” he said.

Laurent Notin said online shopping is linked to the development of online payment methods. “Currently, the incidence usage of credit card is very low in the country and this hampers the growth of online shopping too,” he said.

Paul Blanche-Horgan, CEO of internet provider Ezecom, also said there is tremendous potential.

“We would expect Cambodia to follow the examples set by neighbours such as Thailand where all kinds of businesses use social networking platforms for marketing and sales,” he said.

“E-commerce can be used for everything from ticketing to clothes purchases.”

Existing e-commerce businesses have found other solutions to handle transactions.

“There is potential to use mobile phone top-ups and credit as methods of payment which will hopefully drive the e-commerce industry,” Blanche-Horgan said.

Small shops also arrange meetings in person to do their trade and get the money. “So they can trade the product usually at a shopping mall,” Leng Chanprathna said.

But these methods can make it hard to expand business and make profit, as only a limited number of transactions are possible.

“A true e-commerce site, you’re looking at potentially thousands of transactions a day,” Ken White said.

Purchases in the online retail store shop.com.kh were based on cash on delivery. But Open Development Cambodia published an Economics Today article as reporting that tax issues in Cambodia were the reason for the company’s pullout.

According to White, the tax department here does not yet have the capacity to deal with digital payments and transactions.

According to Ek Vandy, secretary of state of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the ministry does not get involved in tax charges for online business. But he said there has been an improvement in online business and a lot of shops are selling their products online.

Another reason for why e-commerce sites in Cambodia struggle is because of poor marketing, Leng Chanprathna said.

Companies doing e-commerce in Cambodia believe it will soon kick off but still make their profit in other areas, waiting for e-commerce to boom.

“They might be in constructions, or import-export or, you know, they’re big Cambodian companies that are making money in an entirely different field,” Ken White said.

“But they see that... at some time that e-commerce will take off here. So they’ve thrown their hat into the ring.”

Anne Renzenbrink

http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Dec 4, 2012

ASEAN - eCommerce Boom in China and ASEAN

China’s e-commerce industry will grow quickly in the next five years and its transactions are expected to quadruple last year’s figure by 2015. The sales volume of China’s e-commerce will annually grow at least 32 percent year-on-year from 2011 to 2015. We estimate a transaction volume of 18 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) in 2015. The amount in 2010 was 4.5 trillion yuan.

Asia’s online population surpassed 825 million users in 2010 and new research from shows another 700 million more will be added by 2015.

AFTA and CAFTA have changed the way Asians will conduct online business. ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) is a trade bloc agreement by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations supporting local manufacturing in all ASEAN countries.

The AFTA agreement was signed on 28 January 1992 in Singapore. When the AFTA agreement was originally signed, ASEAN had six members, namely, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Vietnam joined in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999. AFTA now comprises ten countries of ASEAN. All the four latecomers were required to sign the AFTA agreement in order to join ASEAN, but were given longer time frames in which to meet AFTA’s tariff reduction obligations. CAFTA is the same trading bloc that now includes China.

Nowhere in the world is online shopping exploding as quickly as in Asia Pacific. This region now includes more than 40% of the global online population, and with the growing percentage of online shoppers and increasing per-capita online spending, the aggregate online retail markets of Asia Pacific are growing faster than their counterparts in North America or Europe.

Turnover of Tmall.com and Taobao.com, two major Chinese online shopping platforms, surpassed 1 trillion yuan ($160.5 billion) as of Nov 30, according to e-commerce platform provider Alibaba Group on Monday.

Turnover of Tmall and Taobao during the first 11 months months this year equals to 5.4 percent of China’s total retail sales in 2011, which stood at 18.4 trillion yuan, according to Alibaba.

Company statistics show that people between the ages of 25 to 35, who are major customers of Tmall and Taobao, contributed to 59 percent of total turnover.

The most favored two categories of products by consumers were clothing, and 3C digital products (computers, communication and consumer electronics), accounting for 30.3 percent and 18.6 percent of the total turnover respectively.

Transaction volume on Taobao.com, which was founded in May 2003, reached 20 million yuan in that same year.

Alibaba split Taobao into three separate companies in 2011. They are Taobao, a C2C online shopping destination, Tmall, a B2C online marketplace for brand-name goods and eTao, a shopping search engine.

Transaction volume on Taobao and Tmall totaled about 630 billion yuan in 2011.

In ASEAN

LAZADA is Southeast Asia’s fastest growing online department store, with operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. LAZADA is pioneering eCommerce across some of the fastest growing countries in the world by offering a fast, secure and convenient online shopping experience with a broad product offering in categories ranging from consumer electronics to household goods, toys and sports equipment. LAZADA is always striving to offer its customers the best possible offering – including multiple payment options, free returns and extensive customer service and warranty commitments.

Swedish investment house Kinnevik is betting big on Southeast Asia’s economic rise through an investment of $40 million in online shopping site Lazada, which is emerging as a leading player in the region’s e-commerce sector.

The new investment comes shortly after Lazada announced that it now had the backing of JP Morgan Asset Management in Hong Kong.

“This provides Lazada with an exceptionally well-funded balance sheet to continue its fast growth in Southeast Asia,” said Lazada, an e-commerce site owned by German incubator Rocket Internet.

The fresh funds would help the company further expand its already-growing reach and product line-up for its customers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

“By focusing on providing superior service to our customers we have grown into a trusted household brand and to broaden our assortment is a natural next step for us,” Lazada’s regional CEO Maximilian Bittner said.

Lazada recently added fashion to its extensive product offering, which ranges from consumer electronics to household goods, toys and sports equipment.

“Kinnevik has a proven track-record of investing in emerging markets and we are very excited to have such a knowledgeable and experienced investor on board,” Bittner said.

“In addition to capital, they will provide us with invaluable strategic insight of operating in such markets. It is also a strong testament to what we have accomplished so far and verifies that we are on the right track to achieve our aggressive strategic goals,” he added.

Lazada is largely believed to be patterned after the popular United States online shopping site Amazon.com, which failed to establish a significant foothold in fast-growing emerging markets like the Philippines.

In a statement, Kinnevik investments head Henrik Persson said Lazada’s rise to become a recognized name in e-commerce in a relatively short period led to the investment.

“We are delighted to invest in Lazada, which has obtained a market leading position,” Persson said. “The company is perfectly positioned to become the major e-commerce player in this region, which counts more than 600 million inhabitants,” he said.

Xirxi Co Ltd is a Retail and Wholesale company for three primary customer bases: consumers, sellers and enterprises. In addition, the Company generates revenue through other marketing and promotional services, such as online advertising, IT Services.

The Company operates in two segments: South East Asia and International. The Company serves consumers through its retail Websites, and focus on selection, price, and convenience, the logistics of online retail and International wholesale in South East Asia offer challenges that large companies like Amazon etc cannot manage.

Xirxi designs its Websites to enable products to be sold by it and by third parties across dozens of product categories. Xirxi also manufactures and sells unique

products that will develop an International Market.

It fulfills customer orders in a range of innovative ways, including international fulfillment centers and warehouses that it operates in Laem Chabang, Thailand’s Tax Free Zone, through co-sourced and outsourced arrangements in certain countries, and through digital delivery. It operates customer service centers in South East Asia, which are supplemented by co-sourced arrangements.

The Company offers programs that enable sellers to sell their products on its Websites and their own branded Websites and to fulfill orders through it. It earns fixed fees, revenue share fees, per-unit activity fees, or some combination thereof from these transactions. The Company serves developers and enterprises of all sizes through Xirxi IT Services (XITS), which provides access to technology infrastructure that enables any type of business.

http://www.livetradingnews.com

Nov 30, 2012

Vietnam - E-commerce – effective way to overcome crisis

The Hanoitimes - The Vietnamese Government has made great efforts to help businesses promote exports and join the global trade network. Domestic businesses need to capitalise on the government’s investment in developing and expanding markets.

Deputy Head of the Import-Export Department Tran Thanh Hai says trade liberalisation can remove tariff barriers and create tax incentives for export businesses to penetrate new markets within the framework of trade agreements signed between Vietnam and other ASEAN countries.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade forecasts that despite facing crunch time at home and abroad, this year’s exports will grow by 16.6 % (still higher than the projected figure of 13%) to 113 billion USD. This means Vietnam will join the club of exporters exceeding 100 billion USD.

Like other export-oriented Asian countries, Vietnam has become the world’s largest coffee and rice supplier.

It owes its successful export business to e-commerce, an effective tool for most businesses to minimise production costs, improve competitiveness and expand their markets.

Vietnam has huge potential for information technology and e-commerce to develop. By the end of September 2012, its Internet users accounted for 35.49% of the total population, 12 times higher than nine years ago. Experts say that if a country has more than 10% of its population using internet services, e-commerce is bound to grow and flourish.

While the global economic downturn has yet to ease, more and more international clients are moving away from traditional markets like China to ASEAN countries where new markets are emerging with low transport costs. This is a good opportunity for Vietnamese businesses to grasp.

Alibaba.com Group representative Michael Mang suggest they take the initiative to expand their client network through e-commerce channels and gradually adjust their sales and marketing methods to meet customer demand.

Export businesses should evaluate the efficiency of their e-commerce performance on a regular basis to ensure sustainable growth, Michael says.

According to the latest statistics gathered from a survey into export businesses on website B2B, their most favoured items on the e-trading floor are food and beverages and agricultural products (24% and 18% respectively), followed by construction materials and housing estate (8%).

By the end of the third quarter of 2012, the US topped other countries with bulk orders for Vietnamese products (10%), followed by China (8%), and India (7%) and three newly-emerging markets, Russia, Hong Kong, and Australia.

Nov 16, 2012

Vietnam - Customers worried as Groupon firm in trouble

Customers of the Groupon company Nhom Mua (www.nhommua.com) are greatly concerned as the website is now inaccessible and the company’s headquarters has been blockaded by economic police.

Operating with the groupon model, Nhom Mua is a deal-of-the-day website that features products at discounted prices and vouchers usable at several local companies, including fashion shops, cafés, restaurants, and household product stores.

Its customers nationwide are now worried that they may not be able to use their purchased vouchers or receive the products they ordered as the company has seemingly shut down.

In the worse-case scenario, the buyers may not get any refunds for the vouchers or products they have bought.

“I’ve bought several vouchers from the company. They all still have valid usage dates but I’m not sure if I can use them for transactions now,” said N.T.B., a resident in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 10.

Some restaurants and stores announced shortly after the news of the company’s potential shutdown broke that they will not accept vouchers bought from Nhom Mua until the case is cleared.

Some buyers have contacted the company’s customer care service, and were told that the company is “upgrading its system and is expected to resume operation next week,” newswire VTC quoted a Nhom Mua attendant as saying.

The customer care attendant assured customers that the purchased vouchers are still usable, while denying the rumor that the company is experiencing an internal conflict.

System failure

“The company system is currently experiencing a technical fault as we are reviewing the entire system of the country, so Internet transactions cannot be completed,” said newly-assigned company director Kyle Pham.

On November 13 a video clip titled “Investors quelling Nhom Mua employees” was circulated on the internet showing a group of security guards with armor, helmets, and bludgeons fighting another group of people wearing blue T-shirts displaying the Nhom Mua text.

VIDEO at http://tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/business/customers-worried-as-groupon-firm-in-trouble-1.92118

“The clip might have been posted following the incident caused by a misunderstanding during the transferring process between the old and new director,” Pham said.

Kyle Pham was on Tuesday appointed to take over the director chair of Nhom Mua, as its founder, Tom Tran, is currently being inspected by Vietnamese economic police and was forced to exit Vietnam last week, Saigon Tiep Thi newspaper reported.

The company headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City was thus blockaded on Tuesday for an inspection related to Tran, who was said to have embezzled company assets and conducted several non-transparent internal transactions.

Pham said the fight was initiated when a female employee under the erstwhile director refused to hand over the company stamp to the new board.

“She then telephoned someone outside for help, and the clip must have been filmed when our guards prevented the outsiders from entering the company,” he explained.

The new director said Nhom Mua’s Internet transactions will not be able to resume operation until November 20.

The company has worked with its partners and ensured that all transactions using vouchers from Nhom Mua are still valid, he said.

“Customers will get a refund if they cannot use the vouchers,” he promised.

TUOITRENEWS

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Oct 26, 2012

Vietnam - MLM company cheats nearly 40,000 people throughout Vietnam

VietNamNet Bridge - According to the police, a multi-level marketing (MLM) company named Tam Mat Troi Investment Corporation was discovered to swindle up to 39,000 people throughout the country.

The Ministry of Public Security’s Southern Office said that the High Technology Crime Investigation Bureau (C50) and the Social Order Crime Investigation Bureau (C45) are investigating fraudulent activities of the Tam Mat Troi Investment Corporation.

According to the firm’s advertisement, its head offices are based on Song Da road, Ward 2, Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City and in a building on Nguyen Dinh Chieu road, Da Kao Ward, District 1, HCM City. In addition, it has branches in 30 provinces and cities.

The police arrested and searched the workplace and home of the company’s director Nguyen Hoang Vu, 31, and five others on October 20. The police seized a lot of documents and exhibits for investigation.

This company is advertised as a member of the Vietnam E-commerce Association, with a contingent of staff who are well-trained technicians and leading experts in e-commerce. But according to investigation, this firm is actually a multi-level marketing network, using sophisticated swindling tricks.

To own an e-shop, each participant had to pay VND6 million ($300) to the firm. The firm’s managers stated that joining this network, members would be able to purchase goods at a much cheaper price than the market price.

The company also asked members to attract new members for the company. With each successful introduction, the company gave bonus of VND1.5 million.

According to the police, about 39,000 people throughout the country became members of this company but so far, no one has bought any goods from it.

Many people denounced this swindling firm to the police.

The police are expanding investigation into the activities of this firm and its branches in provinces.

Dam De

Sep 11, 2012

Vietnam - E-commerce remains a largely untapped opportunity in Vietnam

PwC Vietnam’s deputy general director Stephen Gaskill, associate director Bjoern Maack and manager Le Nguyen Khoi write that Vietnam’s economy can benefit from taking the e-commerce road.

How do you reach 87 million aspiring consumers with strongly growing incomes when the retail market is highly fragmented and quality retail space is rare and expensive? More people believe that e-commerce could be the answer. PwC has conducted extensive research to find out how big the Vietnamese e-commerce market will be, what the most popular business models are and which specific challenges and opportunities companies need to understand when they build their e-commerce strategy.

Our research suggests that Vietnam’s e-commerce market value (gross merchandised value) was approximately of $300 million in 2011 and is expected to grow at an average 75 per cent per annum during 2011-2015 to reach $2.8 billion by 2015. While this increase appears huge, there are several factors on the demand and supply side which make us optimistic about the market’s growth potential.

On the demand side the average disposable income is expected to grow from $570 to more than $820 per annum. While we are aware that a large part of the population will still have very limited funds for discretionary spending, it also entails that discretionary spending becomes possible for a growing number of people.

Moreover the projected growth of internet users from 30 million in 2011 to 37 million in 2016 (BMI) and the expansion of broadband services will increase consumers’ ability to shop online. Not only will there be more people online, but they will also spend more time on the internet. According to Cimigo’s recent study time spent on internet tripled from 43 to 130 minutes per day between 2008 and 2011.

On the supply side the right online shopping business models are crucial to create awareness and transform potential demand into sales. In late 2010, the introduction of group-buying websites radically changed the pace of e-commerce in Vietnam. Our consumer survey of 1,200 people shows that monetary benefits offered by group-buying websites have strongly encouraged customers to engage in e-commerce. We expect that the launch of more online businesses and the emergence of new business models will further stimulate online sales.

Vietnam’s e-commerce sector is very fragmented and there are no clear market leaders in both the Consumer-to- Consumer (C2C) and Business-to- Consumer (B2C) e-commerce markets.

The most popular business model in the Vietnamese e-commerce industry is e-marketplaces.

Notable players in this segment are local companies such as vatgia.com, enbac.vn, 5giay.vn, chodientu.vn. Prominent e-tailers include solo.vn, yes24.vn and zalada.vn. Thegioididong.com, dienmay.com and nguyenkim.com, the online channel of Vietnam’s leading specialist retailers are also very popular. However, none of the players appears to either reach or be close to the leading position that Amazon and Taobao currently have in the US and China respectively. Newcomers who act quickly thus still have a fair chance to establish themselves as strong players in a relatively untapped market.

To achieve lasting success, companies need to understand the specific opportunities and challenges of the Vietnamese e-commerce market. A low credit card penetration rate and the limited popularity of bank transfers for instance mean that cash-on-delivery is still by the preferred payment method.

This also raises challenges for organising an effective logistics infrastructure for e-commerce in Vietnam. To adapt to these and other market conditions companies must tailor their offering and infrastructure accordingly. Based on our recent project experience PwC can support you to successfully tap into Vietnam’s promising e-commerce market.

vir.com.vn

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