Tiki falling behind e-commerce competition

Traffic dropped heavily on the Tiki e-commerce platform

According to iPrice Group, a privately-owned online shopping aggregator based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Shopee is the e-commerce platform with the highest traffic in Vietnam. Its traffic rose by 10 per cent to 38 million visitors compared to the previous quarter, recording the first increase after three quarters of decrease.

Sendo reported some signs of slowdown with a 12 per cent drop to 27.2 million visitors. This e-commerce platform still ranked second, tailed closely by Lazada.

In the last quarter of 2019, Lazada reported 27 million visitors, which is the first quarterly increase after three consecutive quarters of decline.

The worst performance in the fourth quarter was reported by Tiki. From the second position in the fourth quarter of 2018, Tiki fell to the third position in the third quarter and dropped to the fourth in the last quarter of 2019. Traffic on the platform decreased by 32 per cent compared to the peak period in the fourth quarter of 2018.

In 2019, Tiki raised capital twice, in June and December. Its major shareholders are still VNG (24.6 per cent) and JD.com (21.9 per cent), in addition to smaller investors like Ubiquitous Traders Pte., Ltd. (nearly 9 per cent), CyberAgent, STIC, and Sumitomo. VNG's financial statement reported that the value of the company's investment in Tiki has already evaporated as a result of the aggressive spending strategy to gain market share.

In the middle of February 2020, two e-commerce platforms Sendo and Tiki revealed that they were in negotiations over a merger to become a worthy opponent to Shopee and Lazada.

In addition to e-commerce platforms, the websites of offline shops also recorded good performance. The Gioi Di Dong ranked second in the list with 28 million visits, higher than many e-commerce platforms like Sendo, Lazada, or Tiki, followed by Dien May Xanh, FPT Shop, and Dien May Cho Lon which reported a decrease against the previous quarter.

Regarding the number of smartphone downloads, the four e-commerce platforms Shopee, Tiki, Lazada, and Sendo are also leading the list.