Online trading platform Sendo has just landed US$51 million in a series B funding round led by Japanese financial services giant SBI Group, according to techinasia.com.

SoftBank Ventures Korea as well as Beenos and its sister firm Beenext were among the other investors to take part.

Sendo said it will use the funding to improve its eponymous consumer-to-consumer (C2C) portal and launch its new business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplace SenMall.

The capital will also be dedicated to expanding the reach of its mobile wallet and digital payments platform SenPay.

Sendo aims to help individual vendors, micro-entrepreneurs, and small businesses sell their goods online and deliver them cheaply throughout Viet Nam. It claims to serve over 300,000 sellers and several million buyers across the country’s 63 provinces.

In particular, Sendo is targeting second-tier metropolitan areas outside of Ha Noi and HCM City, where it claims that about 74 per cent of Viet Nam’s 95 million people live.

The startup said it has hit an annualised gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $330 million, and it expects to surpass $1 billion in GMV by 2020.

Research from IPrice found that Sendo held around 11 per cent of the Vietnamese e-commerce market last year, while Lazada led the field with a 19 per cent share.

Daiwa PI Partners and SKS Ventures came on board as new investors in this series B round. Previous backers eContext Asia and FPT Group also participated. — VNS