E-commerce is my last subject at university and actually I’ve been quite excited about it. It’s the only subject that is technology-related that I can understand what the entire class hasn’t got the slightest idea about. There were lectures on digital signature, security, front and back-end of an e-commerce system. What I don’t like about the course is the teacher keeps talking (literally) and we don’t have a chance to participate. Our assignment is to build a commercial website that sells anything (except for drugs and prostitution ) using XAMPP, Joomla, and the VirtueMart extension.

After talking to @saigonnezumi, I learnt that in the States and elsewhere people will build the site on the school’s server and the teacher will grade the assignment online. Unfortunately, we have to do it locally, then make a copy of the production site to a CD and submit it to our teacher, then she’ll extract the site, run it, and if she’s happy with it, we get good grades.

On the one hand, it is very old school and demonstrates a fatal lack of technical expertise from our school. Our teacher boasts that ours is the best school when it comes to e-commerce training. A lot of people are helping the part of the government that’s responsible for developing e-commerce in Vietnam. The only proof I can refer to is a rather thick textbook that cover a range of topics.

On the other hand, this is rather techy for the rest of us who have never used a computer for a technical assignment before. It sounds pretty cool but people, as usual, just don’t care. They want to finish school off, get out of it like they want to get out of hell, find a job, and make some money. This is called real “reputation”.

Anyway, I don’t expect the site building process to be tough, I’ll probably play with some nice Joomla theme. Perhaps what makes Joomla as popular as it is today is the many amazing themes it has. Back then in first year, my friend and I used to run a e-book (illegal of course ) website on Joomla and when it reached 600 visits a day, the site crashed. I wonder if it’s still that resource-intensive because E-leaner 2.0 will also be built around Joomla.

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When it comes to E-commerce development in Vietnam’s market, the same sentiment is shared across the industry: online payment is what holds us all back. Mobivi is coming to our rescue, only to find that it’s no blockbuster whatsoever.

Mobivi is a recent online payment startup with a great product: “E-wallet” that is built around very strong (even world-class) technology inherited from a slew of veteran technologists who have had decades of experience in related fields here in Vietnam and elsewhere.Want an example?

Phạm Ngọc Đức, CTO, has had 21 years in high-tech industries working in supercomputing, parallel processing, security, wired and wireless networking solutions for businesses, banks, and financial services. He’s got 6 patents and other 12 submissions in the above-mentioned fields. He graduated from Berkeley University, California with a Electrical Engineering degree.

However, a great product is not a guaranteed success, as pointed out by Jessy Farmer in his article: The cult of the product [http://20bits.com/articles/the-cult-of-the-product/], it is a combination of: a market, a product, and a distribution channel. You can check out his article first and come back here later. Or refer to the following example of Google with three simplified questions:

1. Do they have a market? I bet you will say yes.
2. Do they have a product? Google Search is undoubtedly the best of its kind to date.
3. Do they know how to put it right in front of the customers? Enter a keyword, click Search, and there you go.

Let’s probe Mobivi with the same questions:

1. Do they have a market? I guess they do. Eventually people will shift away from offline shopping to online methods of purchasing, be it goods or services. Disagree?
2. Do they have a product? Talked about it earlier.
3. Do they know how to put it right in front of the customers? Unfortunately, they DON’T.

Mobivi firmly believes that the best person to distribute the E-wallet to its customers are banks and stock brokerage houses. These financial services have a wide network nationwide with a whole lot of existing customers. Asking those banks to market E-wallet for them will be a killer marketing campaign: people sign up for a bank account, a banker then introduces the customer to E-wallet as a value-added service that allows them to purchase stuffs online. Great?

It all boils down to the service of individual bank staff who is serving at the counter. That’s where the problem lies. It’s common knowledge that Vietnamese services suck. Banking is not an exception. Why would I, as a banker, bother to introduce your E something to the bank customer? What kind of benefit do I get? My bank has all kinds of services that I myself have to deal with already. The economy is tough, my pay is low, I just don’t give it a damn. The customers don’t understand about this new kind of service. It takes ages for me to explain. I don’t get paid for that, it’s not my job. Questions like these, and problems like those, are that which force failure right into the throat of Mobivi.

What did Paypal do to get customers? They give $10 to every person signing up. Translation: you get something and get paid [$10]. Not much, but it doesn’t cost anything. It’s a positive incentive to sign up.

In Vietnam, people don’t have faith in online services because it’s simply NEW. They are heavily relying on CASH payment. So the work  is much harder to get them online. Yet, with the emergence of new e-commerce sites such as Vimua, and online payment companies, things are looking up.

Dedication Thanks to Dan for sharing the “Cult of the product” to me. Thanks to you-know-who-you-are for sharing your insights into Mobivi. You’re too busy so I take on the writing task for you .