The Vietnamese e-commerce market is forecast to grow much faster this year.

According to the latest figures from the Map of E-Commerce released recently by iPrice Group - a meta-search website operating in seven countries across Southeast Asia, Shopee still held the dominant position in Q1 2019 with 40.7 million visits per month on average. Tiki followed with 35.6 million visits monthly.

Lazada ranked third with 29 million visits, closely followed by thegioididong.com (28.8 million visits) and Sendo (25.3 million visits).

Q1 2019 also saw several positive trends in the performance of local players, especially Tiki, Sendo, and Adayroi. iPrice’s latest data showed though the first quarter included the Tet (New New Year) holiday period, which is usually a tough time for e-commerce businesses in general, those three merchants still managed to maintain their good results from the previous quarters.

Doing the best in this regard was Tiki. Similar to the previous quarter, the website continued to achieve over 35 million visits per month on average for Q1 2019, helping its web traffic grow at a rate of 23 per cent per quarter on average since the second quarter of last year.

Aside from Tiki, other notable local companies Sendo and Adayroi have been showing encouraging signs. According to iPrice’s Map of E-commerce, the two companies both have an average traffic growth rate of over 16 per cent per quarter for the past four quarters.

Sendo’s CEO Trần Hải Linh also confidently told IT website Tech in Asia recently that his company was on track to achieve US$1 billion in GMV (gross merchandise volume) much earlier than the previously projected target of 2020.

This year would be an inflection point for the Vietnamese e-commerce market, Linh said, adding the market would grow much faster.

“We will see sizable businesses [becoming] comparable to regional players [and] customers becoming more familiar with ecommerce,” Linh told Tech in Asia. — VNS