The dream of serving 100 million Southeast Asian customers of the founder of Vietnam's No. 1 e-commerce support service startup

In 2022, OnPoint is the most prominent startup in the field of e-commerce in Vietnam when it successfully raised 50 million USD from SeaTown Holdings. This is also the largest capital raising deal in Southeast Asia in the field of e-commerce support services. After 2 successful rounds of capital raising (the first was 8 million USD and the second was 50 million USD), Tran Vu Quang - founder and CEO of OnPoint shared: "For me, the goal of becoming a unicorn (a company with a valuation of 1 billion USD or more) is just a milestone, not a destination. The desire to serve 100 million customers in Southeast Asia is a more important destination." But this founder also added: “No one wants to invest 50 million USD to earn only 200-300 million USD in the future. First of all, we have to achieve the expected growth rate in 2023 - an extremely difficult year for the entire economy in general, including the e-commerce industry”. Graduated from Reed College, Tran Vu Quang passed the rigorous selection rounds to join McKinsey (only 1% of excellent students from top universities who applied were accepted) - the world's leading strategy consulting group in the US. After 2 years at McKinsey, Quang moved to Lazada to work at the invitation of 2 former McKinsey founders of this company. After that, Quang accepted the introduction of another former McKinsey to become the personal assistant of billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong (Chairman of the Board of Directors of VinGroup ) in the field of e-commerce. Then Tran Vu Quang left Vingroup to return to Lazada before finding the biggest challenge of his life by starting a business with OnPoint - a startup specializing in providing e-commerce support services (e-commerce enabler) in 2017...

What made you choose McKinsey as your first job right after graduating from university ? Before that, I read the book “The Startup of You” written by the co-founder of LinkedIn and realized that sometimes when you don’t know what to do, you should choose a field with many options. McKinsey is such a place. Of course, it is also because McKinsey is a world- famous company and offers great learning opportunities. The nature of McKinsey since its establishment is that they will recruit fresh graduates because they value problem-solving methods more than experience. At McKinsey, all projects are done in groups, small projects have 3-4 people, large projects have 10-12 people. Therefore, new employees will have the opportunity to learn from the project team or experienced senior employees. After joining McKinsey, I worked at the office in Hanoi. Specifically, what valuable lessons have you learned while working at McKinsey? The first is problem-solving skills. This is extremely useful whether at McKinsey or elsewhere, because you have to identify the right problem before you can solve it. The second is working in an environment that constantly has new things, so you have to learn continuously, with constant deadline pressure, so you also have to constantly change and adapt extremely quickly to be able to do it yourself. In particular, you have to complete the work with very high standards because working at McKinsey also means consulting for leaders and top managers in large corporations. In consulting work at McKinsey, I have to work with many people at different levels, with different interests. I am not their boss, but I have to work in a way that can both support them and help the business. Thanks to that, over time, I have built a system of brothers and friends who can support each other. All these hard and soft skills are very useful, helping me to survive anywhere, always determined to succeed and focus on results.

Having worked for only 2 years, with a huge opportunity to learn, why did you decide to leave McKinsey for Lazada - a newly established company and also in a completely new field: e-commerce? In 2013, I was working on a project in Jakarta (Indonesia), the McKinsey office was in Hanoi so I had to fly back and forth between the two places a lot. Every week I had to fly 4-5 times because there were no direct flights from Hanoi to Jakarta. Usually I would return to Vietnam on Friday night, spend Saturday with my wife and children, and then spend the whole day on Sunday on the plane to Indonesia. At that time, there were times when my child was sick and I couldn't stay home, so I wanted to find a job that could allow me to spend more time with my wife and children. In addition, after working at McKinsey for 2 years, I asked myself whether I wanted to continue working here for another 5-7 years and then be promoted to director or whether I wanted to do new things and create influence. At that time, I also wanted to learn more about startups and leadership. Coincidentally, at that time, Maximillan Bittner and Pierre Poignant, the CEO and COO of Lazada Group at that time, who also worked at McKinsey, contacted people here to come work for Lazada in Vietnam. To be honest, in September 2013, I didn't really understand Lazada or e-commerce (laughs). At that time, I always wanted to do something about startups and Lazada happened to be a startup company.

If I work here, the working environment will give me the right to learn and to be free to develop. Moreover, I thought that I should choose a fast-growing industry, then I will have more opportunities to learn. This is also the reason why I decided to move from McKinsey to Lazada. At that time, I was the first person from McKinsey in Vietnam to move to Lazada because many people were afraid of risks and thought that McKinsey was already a big company while Lazada was just a small startup at that time.

Why did you leave Lazada after less than a year to become a personal assistant to billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong? At that time, I had a friend who was working at McKinsey and this company was also having a consulting project for VinGroup. My friend started working as an assistant for Mr. Vuong first, then asked me if I wanted to meet Mr. Vuong. Of course, I really wanted to meet the first USD billionaire of Vietnam because I wanted to learn about his way of thinking. I flew to Hanoi to meet Mr. Vuong and agreed. Besides liking Mr. Vuong very much, another reason was that Lazada was owned by a European company at that time - Rocket Internet (Germany), with a build to sell model. At that time, I met many sellers on Lazada to convince them to switch from the buy-sell model to the market place model (at that time many people did not understand this model) and found that the service quality of my company was not good. Lazada spends a lot of money on marketing, but out of 10 people who come, 7 are not satisfied and do not return. That is what I do not like - not focusing on service quality with a build-to-sell model. Working with Mr. Vuong will help me learn about customer service because VinGroup's service quality is generally good. And I went to Hanoi to work as his personal assistant in the Adayroi e-commerce project. When working as a personal assistant , what did you learn from Mr. Vuong and what impressed you the most? Mr. Vuong has the ability to think, learn new things and debate very quickly. In each new field, Mr. Vuong has a personal assistant to advise, synthesize information, and help him learn new things very quickly. Second, he often thinks extremely big, always thinking that he must do 10 times, even 100 times more instead of 2-3 times more as everyone thinks.

This changed everything I thought was possible. Like wanting to do 50-100 times bigger, faster than normal progress, with even higher quality. Mr. Vuong built a belief in his employees that once he said it could be done, they would do whatever it took to get it done. Another point is determination. Mr. Vuong is extremely determined in action, and extremely disciplined. At that time, I didn't understand everything. When I left VinGroup and worked at OnPoint, there were things I observed there that I was applying in my company. I learned from Mr. Vuong the desire to help the country develop more - the kind of desire for the Dai Viet Spirit - For a better life for Vietnamese people, the ability to learn a lot of new things and apply them to reality right away. In particular, I learned determination, goal-oriented, doing it to the end, not giving in, not lowering standards, and stopping immediately when a business model fails. But only half a year later, he left this position and returned to Lazada as Commercial Director. Is there any special reason for "running back and forth" to Lazada? After working at VinGroup for a while, I realized that I was not really suitable for the Vietnamese corporate environment. Maybe because I was used to working at McKinsey, an American company, and Lazada, a European company, so the working style was completely different... During that period, Adayroi was also in the process of exploring the market, so it did not fit in with the culture of VinGroup in general. I also asked myself whether I wanted to work for a salary or to do something bigger. At the same time, my old boss at Lazada was promoted to CEO and invited me back. He wanted to bring Vietnamese people to high positions because of long-term commitment instead of choosing foreigners. It is a fact that they often leave within 6 months to 1 year or ask for a salary increase many times over. In addition, I also noticed that the quality of service here has changed, they listen and solve the problems of sellers. Therefore, I agreed to come back and became the first Vietnamese to hold a C-Level position at Lazada at the end of 2014.

Being the Commercial Director at Lazada - the number 1 e-commerce platform in Vietnam in 2017 , why did you decide to quit your job and found OnPoint? First, I think I was greatly inspired by the meeting and handshake with Jack Ma in 2016 in Singapore. At that time, when Alibaba invested in Lazada, Jack Ma and Lucy Peng (CEO Alipay) went to Singapore to meet the management team. During the meeting, he talked about the difference between Alibaba and Amazon: Alibaba is a platform, while Amazon is an empire. The empire makes it grow, even destroy others; the platform serves others, making their business better. Alibaba wants to serve 2 billion people in the world, help 10 million small and medium enterprises do business better and create more than 100 million jobs.

When I heard that, I felt very excited, wanting to do something to help and make an impact on millions of Vietnamese people... Because I was born into a family where both parents are doctors: my father is an emergency doctor, my mother is a dermatologist. Since I was little, I have been in an environment where my parents always helped, saved patients' lives and were very dedicated. When I was little, my father bought me books like Noble Hearts ..., reading many books like that created compassion in me. I often tell you guys here: "The motivation that drives me to do OnPpoint is to want to help people. I want to see how meaningful my work is and how it affects others. Coming to e-commerce in the past 9-10 years is just a fate with me." One direct reason that motivated me to establish OnPoint is that after Alibaba invested in Lazada, many brands came to this e-commerce platform but the two sides did not have a common voice. Lazada wanted brands to reduce prices to be cheaper than other platforms, but brands said: "Then I will lose money or it will affect the price of offline channels, I want to develop sustainably and need new features such as how to promote, how to reduce prices appropriately". At that time, the model and operation of the platform for brands were not optimized. That is the reason I left Lazada to establish OnPoint: I saw a need in the market, and the model to exploit this need had been successful in other countries. When starting a business, the most worrying thing is whether the business model has been proven or not, and there are already customers with pain points that need to be solved. In addition, e-commerce is a field that is growing very quickly, I have passion, knowledge and think that if I start a business, I can do better than the solutions available on the market and create more impact than staying at Lazada.

After 3 years of development, OnPoint decided to raise capital. In 2020, OnPoint successfully raised 8 million USD, by 2022, the next round will be up to 50 million USD. So what makes OnPoint's value increase so quickly in just 2 years? First is growth. OnPoint has grown very quickly in recent years. We have many new customers, opened many new product lines... and created trust for investors. In early 2022, OnPoint entered the Top 500 largest private enterprises in Vietnam (in terms of revenue), according to Vietnam Report's ranking. Second is technology application. After the 8 million USD capital raising round, we accelerated investment in the engineering, data and technology teams. And the software built and developed by the OnPoint team is very good, not only for our own use, but also sold to a number of other companies abroad such as in the Philippines. Currently, they still use OnPoint's software on a monthly basis. Third is customer satisfaction. In addition to operating well for brands, by the end of 2021 - before investors poured money into OnPoint for the new round of funding, we had served more than 3 million customers on e-commerce platforms. OnPoint's rapid growth is based on the technology platform we developed ourselves, and optimizing operating costs, creating a clear difference from other competitors in the market. At the same time, this also shows investors OnPoint's great potential for growth in the future.

In fact, in the e-commerce enabler segment in Vietnam, OnPoint is ranked number 1 and far surpasses the companies behind. The Vietnamese e-commerce market is very potential with nearly 100 million people, expected to be 40-50 billion USD in the next 3 years and has the leading growth rate in Southeast Asia... Those are the reasons why Onpoint's valuation increased sharply in the next capital call.

Since OnPoint was founded, has there been a time when you felt Do you find it too difficult and want to give up? There are many difficulties but I don't want to give up because I always want to be the "last man standing". This comes from the fact that I once watched the movie "Unbroken" based on a true story about the survival battle of American Olympic athlete - Louis Zamperini. Thanks to the years of training and competing in running in high school and college, Louis had the necessary spirit of steel and courage to stand firm and survive after being captured as a prisoner of war. He overcame the fear, torture and abuse during the years of being imprisoned by the Japanese to return. The movie inspired me a lot when doing startups: No matter what you do, you have to survive, if you survive, you will have a tomorrow. People often say that startups have to go through 3 near-death experiences before they can grow up. That's why I'm always ready to accept such life-and-death moments (laughs). Running a startup is a bit like running a marathon. At the starting line, there are many people running together. Look left, look right, there are competitors, but the further you run, the more competitors will fall away, and perseverance will help you become the “last man standing”.

Can you share about OnPoint's near-death experience? In OnPoint's first year, we had to move offices 3 times and warehouses 4 times. Because every time we finished building a new warehouse, about 2 months later, orders increased again, and we had to invest in building a bigger warehouse. Or when the warehouse was just put into operation, the land was taken back. During this time, OnPoint grew very rapidly, at times increasing 50 times. However, due to a lack of professional knowledge in finance and accounting, we could not manage cash flow. The more we grew, the more cash flow was lacking, and that could be considered a near-death experience. But that was also normal. In the beginning, although OnPoint shareholders had many similar values, we did not discuss them to agree on which was the number one priority: profit growth, cash flow, market share, or customer care. In 2017-2018, we thought we needed to try to grow well to have good sales, then we would have to be highly valued to raise capital. However, the faster we grew, the more we lost, our cash flow was stuck. If we focused on customer satisfaction, we would have to invest a lot in systems and services. That investment was huge and a small company could not do it... Therefore, it was important that shareholders and the board of directors agree on what the number one priority was. At that time, all choices became easier. This was also a lesson for me because there really wasn't an MBA course or anyone who could teach me those things, I could only learn them gradually on my own.

How far is OnPoint's goal of becoming the No. 1 e-commerce enabler in Southeast Asia and does the company plan to become a "unicorn"? In fact, OnPoint has not gone far. In 2023, OnPoint will focus more on the Vietnamese market. Talking about goals, in addition to traditional e-commerce platforms, OnPoint also wants to become No. 1 on social media platforms such as TikTok Shop, Facebook, etc. At the same time, OnPoint is looking for investment and cooperation opportunities with e-commerce enablers in other countries. OnPoint wants to collaborate with them to provide services or invest in them to expand to other markets. However, we are still waiting for a more ripe time to decide to invest. When becoming a startup, everyone wants to become a "unicorn". However, for me, the goal of becoming a "unicorn" is just a milestone, not a destination. In terms of vision, I often think that if I have attracted 200 brands, can I increase this number to 600? Or if I currently serve 20 million customers in Vietnam, then I want to serve 100 million customers in Southeast Asia in the future... With those goals, I find them more meaningful and motivating than becoming a unicorn or having a billion-dollar revenue. In my opinion, the billion-dollar capitalization target is just a milestone at a certain point in time because the company's valuation will fluctuate according to the stock market. Personally, OnPoint and I will focus more on the values ​​we create. As for future ambitions, OnPoint hopes to IPO abroad with a very large value target. I believe that current investors will want the same. No one wants to spend 50 million USD to earn only 200-300 million USD in the future.

As a a jogging enthusiast , he discovered get something interesting between run Marathon and running a startup? In fact, I find that marathons help me become more alert, think more clearly, practice high discipline at work, improve my health and have a positive impact on my work. In particular, marathons have taught me how to accept failure. Specifically, I monitor results regularly and learn how to gradually accept failure. The important thing is that I learn from them, what should I do to do better next time. The same goes for business, you always have to have monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals. When you finish a campaign, review all the results, reflect, and learn from them.

Through that, I have learned a lot from running a marathon to running a startup. Running a marathon or doing business are the same, haste makes waste. If you skip steps, do not have a solid foundation, do not have a method, you can only go fast for a while but cannot develop sustainably. In business, without a solid foundation, it is no different from building a castle on sand. Running a marathon or doing a startup will always have a time to sprint, but most of the time it is a long-distance, persistent run. The nature of a startup is to go for many years, about 10-15 years. Thus, the time to do a startup is very long, if you always sprint, you cannot develop strongly in the long term. You must have endurance to run for a long time. Thank you!

According to Market Pulse