“Real estate and retail are two important fields for people, but no business has a comprehensive solution to this problem,” said Mr. Dinh Viet Hung, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of One Mount, explaining why this corporation decided to research and provide solutions for two essential areas of the majority of Vietnamese people. This is also a way for One Mount to realize its goal of serving 75% of Vietnamese households by 2025, with OneHousing to solve the story of the real estate market and VinShop in the retail sector.

Bringing 1.4 million “rice-powered” groceries into the digital era

70% of retail goods are still supplied by small businesses, and serve 75% of the needs of the Vietnamese people – according to Nielsen. In fact, these small businesses still trade and use pen and paper to record their activities in the traditional way and are still outside the 4.0 trend. Therefore, according to Mr. Dinh Viet Hung, in order to create a “revolution” to change the retail sector, it is necessary to target nearly 2 million small traders at 1.4 million grocery stores and 9,000 traditional markets, helping them transform by technology but still maintaining the traditional retail model that has become a community culture in Vietnam.

And VinShop has helped bringing 100,000 groceries in 22 provinces and cities “to the technology world” to solve the biggest problem of small traders, which is the source of goods.Through the VinShop application, grocery owners can actively buy up to 4,000 items every time, every where. The fact that VinShop cuts unnecessary intermediaries also helps save operating costs of the whole retail chain by 10-15%, bringing value to participants including manufacturers, distributors, grocers and end customers.

Before One Mount’s technology is used, grocery store owners often had a notebook to record the types of items they sold. However, each of these items they buy from a few different suppliers and the prices of these items are also constantly changing, they have to update regularly and do not know all the items that are on promotion to actively buy goods. Technology has helped them solve those problems. Grocery owners only need to go to the VinShop application to have a list of suppliers immediately, choose the source of goods quickly with just one touch instead of searching for each supplier of goods. VinShop also takes advantage of data, suggesting which items are selling well for dealer owners to get goods immediately with transparent and competitive prices.

In addition, VinShop has launched the feature of identifying the store shelves of dealers by, in addition to information from the store, getting data from many different sources. Through the camera, it will be possible to analyze which products are selling well without needing a record notebook.

Grocery owners only need to go to the VinShop application to have a list of suppliers immediately, choose the source of goods quickly with just one touch.
Technology may change the way millions of grocery stores operate. However, according to Mr. Dinh Viet Hung, digital transformation for these dealers is not easy because most owners are elderly, so it is difficult to adapt to the application of technology. So One Mount will come to find out what the dealers sell, what problems they face, and then guide them to use the platform.

“When developing the VinShop platform, we had to figure out how to make it easy for dealers to use, with just one touch, they could contact the suppliers. One Mount will have to do for them to see the value of technology application, reduce costs and be effective” said Mr. Hung.

Digital transformation for real estate market transparency

In addition to the VinShop platform in the retail sector, One Mount offers the OneHousing platform to relieve the “pains” of real estate buyers and sellers. Featured by a housing valuation tool, it helps buyers or sellers only take 1 touch to know the exact price of the property at that time. This makes buying and selling transactions quick, easy and transparent.

Sharing about this solution, Mr. Nigel Butler, One Mount’s Director of Data Analytics, said that OneHousing collects information from many different sources such as real estate sales transactions, bank valuations, etc. that only technology can do. Then comes the validation stage to filter out information noise and cross-check between sources and apply AI (artificial intelligence) applications to come up with a pricing model. OneHousing not only determines the price of real estate, but also identifies market trends such as how many bedrooms are needed, which type of bedrooms are needed, how high-rise and low-rise building tend to be.

“Buyers often spend a lot of time researching property prices and trends, but now we’ve solved that problem for them. We use data and AI to analyze data to give advice to homebuyers what to do if they buy houses to invest, what to do if they buy houses to live in,” said Mr. Nigel Butler.

Sharing more about this platform, Mr. Dinh Viet Hung said that after OneHousing analyzes and offers real estate prices, banks may use it as a basis for offering loans very quickly because it does not take time for valuation like now. Even banks can lend customers to buy real estate online and shorten the approval time.

Moreover, this valuation uses AI for analysis, so it will help banks to prevent collusion between credit officers and borrowers to inflate asset values as used to happen. Currently, Techcombank has used OneHousing as a basis for valuation for customers to buy real estate.

“OneHousing does not charge users to encourage buyers and sellers to use technology applications that promote transparency of the real estate market. If more and more users come up, the OneHousing system will evaluate more accurately. Banks may approve loans instantly on this system,” said Mr. Hung.

Banks may use valuation tools as a basis for valuation for real estate borrowers.

Housing valuation tool is just one of three technology tools from OneHousing alongside market analysis and loan approval tools. This trio of breakthrough tools in the real estate industry will empower users to proactively check house values, use price advice sheets for home loan applications at banks, understand project information as well as the area of interest. Time, effort, money and procedures in real estate transactions will be shortened and maximized savings for all participants. Further, technology will promote the real estate market in Vietnam to develop healthier, more sustainable and more vibrant.