E-commerce website Lotte.vn to down shutters

HANOI, Dec 26, 2019, VN Express. E-commerce website Lotte.vn will stop operating from January 20 as the South Korean parent company changes its business plan. A representative of Lotte Vietnam Co. Ltd. told VnExpress Wednesday that existing suppliers of Lotte.vn could partner with retail chain Lotte Mart on a new platform, but gave no further details, VN Express reported.

South Korea’s Lotte group established its e-commerce unit in Vietnam in 2016. Choo Dong Woo, Lotte’s Managing Director of E-commerce Projects, said at the time that the corporation would pour $25 million in the first three years to seize 20 percent of Vietnam’s e-commerce market.

Lotte’s announcement came only five days after conglomerate Vingroup ceased the operations of its e-commerce website Adayroi.com on December 20, as part of its plan to restructure the company to focus more on technology and industry.

Vietnam accounted for 30.9 percent of e-commerce web traffic in Southeast Asia in Q3, second only to Indonesia, according to Malaysia-based iPrice Group.

The country’s Internet economy will reach a value of $12 billion this year, with an annual growth rate of 38 percent since 2015 and is expected to surge to $43 billion by 2025, according to the “e-Conomy Southeast Asia report 2019” by Google.