VietNamNet Bridge - Shopee, the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, has become the most popular shopping application in Vietnam after one year of launching. Mr. Pine Kyaw, Managing Director of Shopee Vietnam, talked with VietNamNet about the successful story of Shopee Vietnam.

VietNamNet: Could you share with us some initial successes of Shopee in Vietnam after one year of operation?

Mr. Pine Kyaw: I think over the past year our success is just getting people in Vietnam to know about Shopee.

Since the official launch, we have had five million downloads and a 133 percent increase in listings, culminating in a total of four million listings to date.

Regionally, the company has achieved an annualized gross merchandise volume of over US$3 billion, with more than 40 million downloads.

So I think for us, our performance has far exceeded our expectations.

VietNamNet: What success of Shopee Vietnam are you most proud of?

Mr. Pine Kyaw: We started on the best mobile platform for usage and invested a lot in mobile efforts.

Shopee tries to solve the trust of online shopping. To protect the buyers, we have “Shopee Guarantee”. We display the seller’s reputation indexes such as Shop Rating, Response Rate and reviews from previous buyers to give the customers visibility before making buying decisions.

We allow buyers and sellers to chat so that buyers can feel confident about the seller they are transacting with.

For sellers, we have a regular offline event named ‘Shopee University’ where we bring together sellers to share with them the latest trends and feedback from buyers as well as tips to improve sales and instill good online behaviors. They get training on selling skills, customer service skills.

I think, we will continue to focus on making buyers and sellers happy.

VietNamNet: Compared to other countries in Asia, what is different and difficult in e-commerce in Vietnam?

Mr. Pine Kyaw: One of the challenges in Vietnam is the payment method.

A lot of consumers in Vietnam still have very strong reference for cash and delivery in terms of payment method.

The percentage of COD payment in Vietnam is 65 percent, 8 times higher compare to the world’s average (about 8 percent), meanwhile the figures for debit and credit card payment are trivial. But in Singapore, there’s very high credit card penetration and people there usually use credit card, internet banking or even bank transfer for payment.

Secondly, e-commerce in Vietnam is still at its infancy. Both businesses and consumers are still trying to reap the full benefits of this model. For consumers, it is about sustaining competitive prices at large volumes, and gaining full confidence in the transaction process.

For businesses, while short term measures such as vouchers and discounts are effective in acquiring users, the big question is how to eventually sustain an operating model that makes economic sense.

VietNamNet: You know that e-commerce is very competitive in Southeast Asia, so what is Shopee’s direction in the future?

The Shopee 9.9 Online Shopping Day made a new record with a more than three-fold increase in orders

Mr. Pine Kyaw: After more than one year joining the market, we’ve observed that the e-commerce market changes very quickly and it’s dependent on several things, including payment, infrastructure, logistics, infrastructure, Internet penetration and platform penetration.

So the key for us is to listen actively to our buyers - What do they want and how can we meet their needs? So that is our strategy. To be honest, it’s not very sexy, but that has been our focus over the year: What do customers want, when do they want it, how do they want it?

We are looking at a couple of things to increase Vietnam’s contribution to the company. For example, we are seeing a lot of big brands starting to work with us; we are seeing a lot of buyers wanting to buy online. So we are piloting a section to cater to the big brands and also buyers who want to buy random stuff. 

VietNamNet: Shopee is a successful startup in Singapore, can you share some experience for Vietnam’s startups?

Mr. Pine Kyaw: I think there is no difference from any startup in any region. First thing is a lot of hardwork; it secondly is a lot of persistence, you need to keep trying, and the third thing is that you need of very new ones understanding on the market. 

Any startup needs to understand their problems, figure out which ones are important and find ways to solve them. By doing that, they can be successful for growth.

VietNamNet: The last one, what is Shopee’s plan to grow in Vietnam in the future?

Mr. Pine Kyaw: Well, we just made new record on Shopee 9.9 Online Shopping Day with a more than three-fold increase in orders. The biggest online shopping festival in Southeast Asia and Taiwan has set a new record with a 3.5 times increase in orders and a 5 times increase in daily visits, recorded an average of 21 minutes. In collaboration with over 30,000 sellers, the event amassed a total of 88 live chats per second.

Top 9.9 sellers enjoyed a significant increase in orders of up to 1,500 times their daily average, and the highest number of items purchased by a single buyer was 218. For Shopee Vietnam, the top three categories were health and beauty, toys, kids and babies, electronics. 

Shopee 9.9 Online Shopping Day was a huge success across the region, with over seven million live chats on that day. We hope that this event will be remembered as an iconic day which has helped to push forward Vietnam’s e-commerce scene. Shopee Vietnam will also be launching several key initiatives in the upcoming months to further enhance our platform, so keep a lookout for more information which will be released soon.

VietNamNet: Thank you very much! 

PV