Shopee and Vietnamese e-commerce platform Sendo emerged as Vietnam’s top two largest e-commerce platforms by web traffic in the third quarter (Q3) of this year, according to market research company iPrice.
According to iPrice’s Map of e-commerce Vietnam for Q3, the largest platform in terms of web traffic is still Shopee. The company’s website was number one for the quarter with 34.5 million visits monthly. In addition, Shopee’s shopping app topped the table in terms of monthly downloads and active users.
Local e-commerce platform Sendo, part of Vietnam’s largest IT services company FPT Corporation, saw a significant increase in website visitors. The number of visitors to Sendo’s website in the third quarter reached 30.9 million monthly, marking the second consecutive quarter that the website has seen a 10% increase in traffic.
Sendo has B2C and C2C businesses and currently serves more than 300,000 sellers and 10 million buyers. Unlike its competitors, Sendo focuses on customers in all regions, instead of just big cities. Its solutions are proving to be fruitful, especially in attracting new users to its web platform, as well as application.
In August 2018, Sendo raised USD 51 million in a Series B funding round led by SBI Group from Japan, alongside SoftBank Ventures Korea, Daiwa PI Partners, and SKS Ventures. In an interview with KrASIA in September, CEO Tran Hai Linh said that “web traffic is certainly one of the relevant indicators but it is definitely not the only criteria assessing the scale and development of an e-commerce platform”. He added that having such impressive numbers in terms of web traffic and gross merchandise value (GMV) always requires burning lots of money.
E-commerce platform Tiki, after being in second place nationwide for a long time, has now conceded to Sendo. iPrice predicted that the decline in Tiki’s monthly website traffic (from 33.7 million in quarter 2 to 27.1 million in Q3) could be a temporary fluctuation, attributed to the company focusing on improving its infrastructure.
At its annual partner meeting in September, Tiki founder Tran Ngoc Thai Son shared that the company will increase the number of warehouses within the next three quarters to optimize both the ability to store goods, as well as shipping speed. Tiki is in the process of raising capital for its D round, possibly between USD 50-100 million from strategic investment funds or financial investor groups.
Meanwhile, Alibaba-owned e-commerce giant Lazada, which had 28.3 million visits, fell to fifth place in terms of web traffic.
The latest Google-Temasek-Bain report on e-commerce in Southeast Asia for 2019 said that Vietnam is emerging as the most digital of all economies in the region, with the GMV of its internet economy set to account for more than 5% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2019. According to this report, Vietnam’s e-commerce market could be worth USD 23 billion in 2025.