Danny Le, CEO of Masan Group Corporation, presents the company’s strategic roadmap towards building a Point of Life network at its annual general meeting held in HCM City on April 28. — Photo courtesy of Masan

HCM CITY — Masan Group Corporation is focusing on adopting technology and artificial intelligence across its daily operations and consumer experience to truly become a consumer-tech ecosystem, according to Danny Le, its CEO.

Masan Group and two of its key publicly listed subsidiaries, Masan Consumer and Masan MEATLife, jointly held their 2022 annual general meeting in HCM City with a shared theme, ‘Consumer of Things’ on April 28.

Le said Masan’s mission has been to uplift the material and spiritual lives of Vietnamese consumers through innovation and transformation.

For Masan, that means serving big unmet consumer needs in the most cost-productive and scalable way possible.

Through Masan Consumer, Masan MeatLife, and WinCommerce, Masan has transformed the way Vietnamese consume and shop for food.

This year Masan provided more details on its ‘Point-of-Life consumer-tech’ (POL) offline-to-online digital ecosystem as it begins transforming the way Vietnamese live (B2C), and seeks to gradually expand into how Vietnamese conduct business (B2B) to form a coherent B2B2C ecosystem in 2024 and beyond.

POL comprises of three layers.

The first has products and services that Masan offers to its consumers and merchant partners.

The second layer forms the underlying commerce infrastructure connecting ecosystem participants comprising of a loyalty programme, a 4 PL end-to-end logistics network and payment solutions.

The third is a technology platform with artificial intelligence and machine learning analytics capabilities that enable Masan to scale its ecosystem and apply data analytics to improve its core businesses and provide more personalized, convenient and accessible offerings to consumers and merchants.

The POL consumer-tech ecosystem answers two core questions that Masan has pursued throughout its history -- how to uplift productivity in the consumer value chain and how to address Vietnamese consumer unmet needs -- Le said.

Vietnamese consumers are getting younger, diversifying their consumption, living a more digital lifestyle, and demanding more personalised attention, convenience and accessibility.

To meet these unmet needs, Masan is expanding its products and services and applying technology to meet the changing expectations of consumers.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology will allow Masan to understand its consumers and smarten its loyalty programme to better engage with them, Le said.

He also spoke about the ‘Mini Mall,’ a community hub concept that pairs basic needs with financial and lifestyle needs in a single convenient Winmart+ location.

This is a point where Masan digitises its consumers by onboarding them onto a loyalty program when they shop within Masan’s ecosystem

Trường Công Thắng, CEO of CrownX, says: “Mini Mall integrates basic, financial and lifestyle needs inside a single small-scale retail location: grocery shopping at Winmart+, financial services at Techcombank, F&B at Phúc Long, telecom and digital services at Reddi, and health and well-being at a to-be-announced pharmacy.

This concept is suitable for 100 million Vietnamese consumers and can be expanded in both urban and rural areas due to its winning economic model.

In 2021 WinCommerce delivered positive EBITDA and Mini Mall aims to be EBIT and NPAT positive by 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Masan aims to grow its offline footprint to 10,000 owned stores and 20,000 franchised ones to serve 30-50 million consumers by 2025.

Its 2022 financial performance proposed to shareholders includes consolidated net revenues of VNĐ90-100 trillion ($3.91 - $4.33 billion), representing growth of 22-36 per cent.

It targets net profit after tax and pre-minority interest (NPAT pre-MI) of VNĐ6.9 - 8.5 trillion, 82 per cent to 124 per cent compared to VNĐ3.8 trillion last year (which excludes one-time gains/losses and the feed segment contribution).

At the AGM, Masan Consumer proposed a cash dividend of 10 per cent (VNĐ1,000 per share), its third straight year of paying a cash dividend.

Masan deal with Trusting Social to accelerate consumer-tech vision The partnership with Trusting Social further expands Masan’s consumer capabilities with AI and ML consumer solutions to meet consumer’s need for personalisation, convenience and accessibility. — Photo courtesy of Masan. HCM CITY — Masan Group Corporation on August 28 announced the closing of its US$65 million investment for 25 per cent of Trusting Social Vietnam. The partnership will accelerate its off-to-online vision to provide retail and consumer AI and fintech solutions to power its consumer-tech ecosystem.  Trusting Social delivers artificial intelligence and machine learning-led products to leading banks and finance companies, enabling them to provide consumption financing products to under-served consumers at scale. Through its partnership with Masan, Trusting Social aims to leverage its AI and ML platform to personalise offerings from essential and financial to discretionary needs for Masan’s consumers. Since establishing The CrownX in December 2019, Masan has been adding pieces to its ‘Point of Life’ puzzle by expanding its portfolio of products and services to address consumers’ diversifying unmet needs and piloting its mini-mall concept for greater convenience and accessibility. The partnership with Trusting Social further expands Masan’s consumer capabilities with AI and ML consumer solutions to accelerate Masan’s O2 transformation to meet consumer’s need for personalisation, convenience and accessibility. Le says: “Walmart has invested heavily to develop an AI and ML platform and has leveraged it to become the leading offline and online daily, consumer life platform. “The Trusting Social partnership provides Masan a similar cutting edge AI and ML platform tailored for 100 million Vietnamese consumers. Our job together now is to develop it from a pure credit scoring use case to a holistic consumer engine.”  In the short term this partnership will drive cost efficiencies and business value across Masan’s core business activities including retail store selection, demand and supply planning, product assortment, commercial sales and marketing and product development. In the long term, an AI and ML platform will enable Masan to deliver financial solutions to unbanked consumers, a personalised loyalty offering and convenient access to goods via off and online grocery and smart supply chains.   Trusting Social’s founder and CEO Nguyễn An Nguyên says: “I am proud that a Vietnamese platform has been able to create a credit scoring AI and ML platform that financial institutions across Asia are utilizing to serve their consumers better. “The partnership with Masan is exciting as we broaden our platform from credit access to a total consumer life solution. We believe Masan and Trusting Social have the same belief that Vietnam can create a transformation and disruption on par with global peers.”  — VNS