VietNamNet Bridge – The online retail market, which is expected to have the value of $4 billion by 2015, has become large enough to attract some of the bigger fish in recent months.

In mid-July, Sen Do Company, which is running sendo.vn, an e-commerce floor, announced the takeover of 123mua.vn, an e-commerce floor developed by VNG.

Sen Do is a subsidiary of FPT, the Vietnamese largest technology group. And the deal, in observers’ eyes, shows the technology group’s strong determination to expand its online distribution network.

Tran Hai Linh, CEO of Sen Do, said the the takeover of 123mua.vn would help sendo.vn gain four-fold growth rate in one year.

FPT is also taking firm footsteps to expand the retail network, which has become one of its main sources of revenue. The technology group reported revenue of VND15 trillion in the first half of the year, to which the retail sector contributed VND2.1 trillion, a sharp increase of 81 percent over the same period of last year. The online distribution channel has reportedly gained impressive growth rate of 600 percent.

According to Nguyen Thi Bach Diep, general director of FPT Retail, the company hopes to obtain VND4 trillion in revenue and VND24 billion in profits this year.

In mid-April, Big C Vietnam, a big retail network, officially launched Cdiscount.vn, an online distribution channel. Laurent Zécri, general director of Big C Vietnam, called the website launching a “strategic move”.

Cdiscount.vn provides a wide range of 7,000 products related to beauty and health care, house decoration and daily life. The figure is expected to rise to 25,000 products by the end of the year.

VinGroup, known as a real estate and shopping mall developer, has also decided to develop an online distribution channel with VinE-Co. Spending VND750 billion to develop the website, VinGroup hopes VinE-Co would not only help distribute the products and services of the group, but also products and services of the brands which are leasing retail premises at VinGroup’s shopping malls.

Tini.vn, an operational e-commerce floor, has announced that it has successfully called for capital from the Japanese Sumitomo Fund. The owner of the website said the new financial resource would allow tini.vn to increase the number of products to trade to 100,000 in the time to come.

Meanwhile, Lazada Vietnam’s CEO Christopher Beselin has stated that achieving the No. 1 ranking is the company’s goal, and that it will reach that goal soon.

Lazada Vietnam is considered a “big fish” in the market with powerful financial capability. Sources said that investors have committed to pour $250 million in lazada.vn to develop Vietnamese and Southeast Asian markets.

In its April report, the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Information Technology & E-commerce Agency predicted that many newcomers would turn up in the e-commerce market in the coming time, as the market has become more active.

In 2013, revenue from the online distribution sector reached $2.2 billion, which meant that every Vietnamese consumer spent an average of $120, or VND2.5 million yearly to buy products and book services online.

DNSG