Vietnamese startup Telio aims to raise $50 million to $60 million in the latest funding round for its business-to-business eCommerce platform, Nikkei Asia reported Friday (Aug. 5).
Started by Bui Sy Phong in 2019, Telio had raised $51 million by November 2021, at which time it announced a pre-Series B funding round that included $22.5 million from Vietnamese unicorn VNG, according to the report.
At that time, VNG said it would integrate Telio into VNG’s messaging platform called Zalo, which has 64 million monthly users and with which Telio already had a partnership, the report said.
Telio now serves 60,000 stores in Vietnam that use the platform for sourcing, and it’s available for three verticals: fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), lifestyle, including cosmetic and fashion brands, and healthcare, including medicine and medical equipment, according to the company’s website.
The company’s competitors include VinShop and Kilo, according to the Nikkei Asia report.
Kilo Founder and CEO Kartick Narayan told the Financial Express on April 5 that Kilo had 30,000 wholesalers and retailers doing business on its platform and wants to acquire 1 million new businesses by the next financial year.
Read more: Vietnam’s B2B Market Kilo Aims for 1M Customers Next Year
In the interview with the Financial Express, Narayan said Vietnam has an extremely fragmented and mostly unorganized retail sector, dominated by small neighborhood stores selling everything from groceries to fresh fish to pharmaceuticals to electronics.
“Vietnam has around 100 million people and 7 million small and medium enterprises,” Narayan said. “The retail density is extremely high and there’s one micro retailer for every four households in the country. So, this $180-billion market is really the backbone of the economy.”
According to the Nikkei Asia report, another reason investors are attracted to the country’s B2B eCommerce sector is because Vietnam is a key manufacturing hub.