Vietnam's Sendo raises $61m Series C
Vietnamese e-commerce company Sendo has received $61 million in Series C funding from a group of investors including SBI Group and SoftBank Ventures Asia.
Japan's Beenos, Digital Garage, and Daiwa PI Partners also participated alongside Thailand's Kasikornbank and Indonesia's EV Growth. It follows a $51 million Series B last year led by SBI with support from SoftBank Ventures Asia, Daiwa, Beenos, Beenext, SKS Ventures, FPT Group, and eContext Asia.
Sendo claims to be Vietnam's leading C2C e-commerce company with more than 500,000 sellers and about 17 million stock keeping units listed on its platform. The start-up serves over 12 million customers across all 63 provinces in Vietnam as part of a plan to differentiate itself by focusing on tier-two cities in addition to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
The business reached its target gross merchandise volume of $1 billion ahead of schedule. Sendo hopes to achieve profitability by opening multiple revenue streams. This strategy had led to the developed of an integrated ecosystem spanning marketplace, advertising, logistics, and financial services. In 2012, Sendo became the first e-commerce company in Vietnam to launch an e-wallet service.
"Sendo's strength in utilizing the capabilities of its partners within the ecosystem has essentially created a win-win for merchants, 3PLs [third-party logistics], advertising companies, and financial institutions," Daniel Kang, a managing director at Softbank Ventures Asia, said in a statement. "The company's marketplace model is extremely well-aligned to address the needs of typical Vietnamese sellers and consumers, and more importantly, to empower them."
Vietnamese consumer companies are beginning to attract large strategic investors and international private equity players as their businesses grow in step with the local economy. Consumer expenditure has expanded at about 8% per year since 2012 and grew 8.8% during 2018, according to CEIC.
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