MANILA, Philippines — Online shopping has become the norm this pandemic. Convenient and relatively fast, home essentials and lifestyle picks can be yours in a matter of two days without ever leaving your house.
But with its popularity, there have been reports of incidences where "fake" sales have been made. Customer service and delayed arrivals are also other growing concerns.
A Filipino-made e-commerce platform said that it can be the alternative that can address these woes.
VeMoBro is a new player in the e-commerce space. It is proudly Filipino, said its founder, Chief Executive Officer and President Engr. Vergil Bargola.
The platform had been at the back of Bargola's mind for years, having been involved in the logistics industry for a decade. He and his team started to work on the platform in February last year but then the pandemic happened.
Instead of going back to their homes, his team of programmers locked themselves in their office to continue working on the platform. They were done by December.
With their vision of providing an alternative e-commerce platform with "compassion" and "heart" of the Filipino, the company was launched last January.
"We decided to shift from our core platform, which is automobiles to electronics. So, we started to redo our business which is to focus on supermarket and marketplace," he said.
The platform's homepage is clean and organized under three major categories, namely, Essentials, Electronic and Automotive.
At the time of the launch, Bargola said they have about 30 partner merchants. The relatively small number of merchants was deliberate as they are stringent with their onboarding process, meaning they screen the interested merchants who would want to sell their products on the platform.
The brands featured are relatively small businesses. It is because the brand wanted to help the MSME segment, which was badly hit during the pandemic.
Another thing that the app offers is fair use between customers and sellers. Both parties in the transaction can rate each other on the site. While the review of sellers has been a long-known feature on online shopping sites, the new platform encourages sellers to appeal and report faulty product reviews. Additionally, sellers can give reviews of customers so other merchants can be made aware of fraudulent customers or transactions.
"The strength of our platform is that we update and improve our system and platform from time to time. We are inclusive and open when it comes to our portal. Our goal is to make it a household name, like a sari-sari store with its extended family," enthused Rain Ibajo, co-founder, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.