A screen shot of the Mio platform, a start-up that has received US$1 million in seed funding. — VNS Photo

Social commerce platform Mio said it has closed an oversubscribed US$1 million seed funding round that was co-led by Venturra Discovery and Golden Gate Ventures and had other major participants like iSeed SEA and Gokul Rajaram.

Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, co-founders of Meesho, an Indian social commerce unicorn, have also invested and will join Gokul Rajaram as advisors to Mio CEO Trung Huynh.

Mio, founded in 2020 by industry veterans from IDG Ventures Vietnam and SCommerce, seeks to offer financial independence to women in lower tier and rural cities in Viet Nam by enabling them to become micro-entrepreneurs through community selling.

It creates an alternate distribution channel through agents, who use social media channels such as Facebook, Zalo, TikTok, and Instagram to reach end consumers, often their neighbours and families.

Mio also supports them with training, order management, fulfilment, and logistics.

It focuses on product quality, pricing and personalisation to help resellers improve their sales and customer service.

Hundreds of its agents are making VND2-8 million ($86.92-350) a month, a substantial sum given that their monthly incomes are often less than VND8 million ($350)

The seed funding will be used to invest in distribution centres and hire more people for the technology and product teams to build a suite of new customer acquisition and selling tools.

The start-up also plans to add more personalisation options for its resellers and product categories, and, with the funding, aims to sign up thousands more agents and expand to more provinces.

Rural consumers account for 63 per cent of the population and 60 per cent of GDP. They represent a large market opportunity as e-commerce players have traditionally sidelined the lower-tier markets as their poor logistics infrastructure adds to costs. — VNS