Taiwan Mobile invests in Vietnamese e-commerce company TIKI as the first step to venture into Southeast Asia

(中央社訊息服務20210820 16:54:45)Taiwan Mobile Co., Ltd. has finalized its E round financing agreement with TIKI, one of the largest domestic e-commerce companies in Vietnam. TIKI has a complete B2C storage and logistics systems, allowing it to maintain a significant advantage over its competitors in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

Benefiting from the robust growth in both the Vietnamese economy and its e-commerce market, as well as increasing customer loyalty generated from TIKI's outstanding logistical and customer services and a constant expansion in its services, TIKI is expected to see high growth potential.

This investment will prove to be beneficial for both sides, allowing Taiwan Mobile and momo.com Inc. to gain a foothold in the Greater South East Asia (GSEA) market and working as a jumping board into other potential expansion. A strategical ally AppWorks (since 2019) also took part in the recent round of funding negotiations.

"This alliance with TIKI marks Taiwan Mobile's first investment in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, which will ensure Taiwan Mobile gains a strategical foothold in the market," Taiwan Mobile President Jaime Lin said.

"In line with the group's strategic development plan, this alliance will also allow Taiwan Mobile and its subsidiary momo to discover potential partners, break into the Southeast Asia market and create a new growth engine for Taiwan Mobile in the search for new development opportunities outside of Taiwan, propelling it to move toward its goal of becoming a GSEA internet company," Lin said.

Being a large domestic e-commerce company in Vietnam, TIKI has claimed the title of "Amazon of Vietnam," which started with selling books. It has since developed into a full-fledged B2C e-commerce platform.

TIKI holds the leadership position in terms of customer confidence, delivery time and satisfaction of customer service compared with all other Vietnamese e-commerce platforms. Through its B2C business model, which avoids sales of counterfeit items, it has built a comprehensive logistical infrastructure.

Taiwan Mobile's "Super 5G strategy" aims at making the company a GSEA internet company by using its core technologies and advantages in collaborations with regional quality partners. Experiences gained by Taiwan Mobile and momo, from creating an intelligent logistics fleet to building smart storage automation systems, could help TIKI in its growth and forge a synergy between both sides in sales and logistics.

As more than half of Vietnam's 103 million population are young people, and thanks to its high economic growth and a large pool of IT related talent, the country registered an economic growth rate of 2.9 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, the rate has been forecast at 6.6 percent for 2021.

What's more, Vietnam has around 80,000 university students graduating from IT related fields (compared with around 35,000 thousand in Taiwan) per year, which serves as a steady flow of talents for the development of digital economy and e-commerce.

According to the annual report from e-Conomy SEA 2020, e-commerce in Vietnam posted a 46 percent growth in 2020, and is expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 34 percent all the way to 2025, with estimated annual sales of US$29 billion, underscoring great growth potentials for a local e-commerce leader like TIKI.