SBC102 case

PURPLE VIETNAM CASE STUDY CONTRIBUTOR

Our Coach

Mr. Trần Xuân Lĩnh

Our Members

Đỗ Quỳnh Châu

Phạm Ngọc Thúy Diễm

Đỗ Khánh Đăng

Trương Hoàng Khôi

Đỗ Hải Linh

Vũ Khánh Linh

Trần Ngọc Bảo Quỳnh

Nguyễn Tấn Sang

Trần Ngọc Thụy

Nguyễn Đỗ Quỳnh Trang

Nguyễn Kông Quỳnh Trang

Huỳnh Nhật Đoan Trinh

Phạm Thành Đức Tường

Đoàn Phương Uyên

Phan Nguyễn Tường Vy

 

1. Introduction

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is a critical component in ensuring the health and well-being of children and young people (UNESCO, 2021). In Purple Vietnam, we believe that everyone deserves accurate sex education for a better life. To address this vision, we emerge innovative CSE approaches by utilizing digital technology and community-based learning to offer inclusive education. This paper presents the Business Model Canvas (BMC) that Purple Vietnam designed to consist of our solution idea with business activities. The BMC was invented by Alex Osterwalder to design, evaluate and communicate business models through nine building blocks, including customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partners, and cost structure (Strategyzer, 2023).

2. The desirability of the project

As a social business, we need to access the needs of both market and social target groups. With evidence-based information from a mixed-method research program, including surveys and focus group interviews, Purple Vietnam  creates our customers’ persona, addresses their need to identify the relationships, designs product-matched value propositions, and chooses channels to communicate with them.

Firstly, the teenagers as our users are digital natives so they prefer to learn through apps. They are also curious, audacious, and open-minded about sex education. However, teenagers face barriers that exist in their learning path, including the social norms of early sex education as taboo (Blace, 2013), limited discussion with parents (Ha, 2017), and the gap between CSE standards and school-based curriculums (UNESCO, 2023). Hence, we define Purple Vietnam as a trustworthy friend to share Sex Education knowledge in an interesting way through comics & chatbots. To communicate with this user segment, Purple Vietnam uses both online and offline channels with various tactics such as social media, KOL, KOC, word of mouth and the Member-get-members scheme.  

Secondly, parents as buyers play a crucial role in supporting our user purchase for the app subscription. Despite hoping children thrive with well-being, many parents are unconfident in sharing related topics (Ha, 2017) and worrying about unreliable information sources (Purple Vietnam, 2023). By catering to the buyer persona, we posit us as a credible solution to help them educate children about Sex Education. To build trust with parents, Purple Vietnam approaches these buyers through online and offline channels with reputed landing pages and educational workshops to extend our visibility and shape parents’ attitudes toward early sex education benefits.

Thirdly, as the primary purpose of social business, we decided to bring out publications and training in highland groups facing urgent child marriage & inaccessible higher education. A 50-response survey for social target reveals their desire to change the status of their lives and perceptions of the community. Despite the awareness of the crucial role of sex education in helping them make life-matter decisions, related information is still limited in their areas due to the difficulty in sharing with parents, restricted community and poor education system. Therefore, Purple Vietnam enhances social impact by providing Edutainment comics and sponsoring for ethnic minority teenagers. 

 

3. The feasibility of the project

To achieve value propositions, Purple Vietnam conducts different activities to achieve business success and create social impact on vulnerable/ disadvantaged teenagers. There are Job-To-Be-Dones in accordance to priority level, including: provide sex education comics and sponsor for education of ethnic minority teenagers, provide comprehensive sexuality education through mobile app, and raise parents’ awareness and knowledge about sex education. Regarding social values, education is our first priority to deliver value propositions, as well, we focus on sponsors for highland teenagers. Besides, social activities are supported by business activities (with Profit-oriented value) such as communication activities to raise awareness, promote branding image and conduct workshops. Additionally, raising capital and connecting consulting units in practice will assure the sustainable growth and viability of our company.  To successfully deploy these activities, Purple Vietnam built strong relationships with our coach, mentor and partners,  along with enhancing internal resources.

It is Purple Vietnam’s honor to have the mentoring from coach of many social business projects Mr. Tran Xuan Linh, majoring product launching  Furthermore, the support from 10-year-experience sex education expert Ms. Uyen & 7-year-major in Mental and Sexual health Mr. Dung, provide available resources for educational contents. 

At the early stage of business, more than half of resources come from the support of key partners, however, we are continuing to recruit new in-house members. Currently, Purple Vietnam has formed a team with 15 members who have experiences in business, marketing, social media, event, education, graphic design and IT. In order to manage the resources well, we build a strong organizational structure to deliver value from planning to action consistently, and ensure our D.E.I culture which makes us strong. The highest level in our business is the Board of Directors (B.O.D) three members who have experiences in the mobile app industry, marketing and human resources management. B.O.D aims to promote Purple Vietnam’s long-term orientation to achieve success, enhance social value and working culture through taking responsibility in strategic planning, decision making and delegation oversight. To support B.O.D in managing closely departments overseeing administrative tasks and deploying strategic plans, we have promoted the seniors management who have education and experience expertise in related fields. Last but not least, Execution Associates are our dynamic members who engage closely in business strategy through implementing end-to-end activities and contributing innovative ideas. 

As an effort in learning cost and increasing resources, Purple Vietnam deployed crowdfunding/sourcing campaigns and attracted 500 cooperation agreements from various stakeholders. Especially, there are many important partners that contribute crucial roles in our success activities. In workshop activities, prestigious speakers and MCs have participated with non-financial purposes. Additionally, there are many units of university, media, music and tea-break suppliers that provide support for us without fees. By the joint-hand of stakeholders, we have conducted successfully two workshops with more than 200 participants including teenagers and parents.

 

 

4. The viability of the project

Through incorporating viable business elements, Purple Vietnam builds cohesive cost structure to gain a sustainable revenue stream to create profit from product, advertising and commission. To define the needed cost and potential revenue stream, we have worked diligently on creating the business system and go-to market action plan. 

 

Within the business, there are four significant activities segments which need to pay attention to, including: operation, R&D, management system and supply chain. Initially, Purple Vietnam needed to invest 3.5 billion VND in building a chatbot AI system specialized in CSE. Therefore, we can optimize the annual AI subscription which accounts for 0.1$ per question per user, and focus the financial capacities on other activities segments. Firstly, the product development cost covers two segments including operation and R&D with the total cost of 1.170.000.000 VND per year. Secondly, our wages and salary expenditure support our business in recruiting and retaining comic artists, developers and business staff which cost 1.618.740.000 VND per year. App release activities cost 6,4% in 700.000.000 VND for yearly marketing expenditure.  To capture the potential app-based learning market, the annual cost needed to acquire is 4.216.000.000 VND.

Along with the growth of app-based learning, Sex education on mobile apps is a potential market due to the demand of learning from teenagers and parents (Purple Vietnam, 2023). Hence, Purple Vietnam potentially captures revenue from two different streams including operating and non-operating. Non-operating revenue stream consists of in-app marketing, affiliate marketing and investment from investors. Meanwhile, the operating revenue stream comes mainly from four app subscription packages which were built based on the permitted price range of 200,000 VND (Purple Vietnam, 2023). By leveraging revenue from app subscription, Purple Vietnam can get the even point after 5,5 years due to the annual app-based learning market growth rate of 14% (Ken Research, 2019). However, the time to get the break even point might be reduced because the calculation doesn’t include non-operating revenue streams and the target market still surges due to the growth of smartphone use (IDC Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 2022).

 

5. Conclusion

Purple Vietnam with the initial idea of comprehensive sex education have applied Business Canvas Models in our project to consist of our solution idea with business activities. From there, we are able to understand our customer and how to deliver right values to them. Additionally, we also identify necessary resources to successfully deploy the business to capture money from the market with the purpose of creating the most meaningful social impact.

 

 

6. References

 

1. UNESCO. et al. (2021) The journey towards comprehensive sexuality education.

2. AG, S. (2023) Components of Business Model Canvas explained, Strategyzer. Available at: https://www.strategyzer.com/business-model-canvas/building-blocks (Accessed: 12 June 2023).

3. Hà, 2017 – Ha, T. (2017, March 28). Schools neglect teaching students about sex education. Retrieved from hps://english.vietnamnet.vn

4. Blanc, M. (2013). Sex education for Vietnamese adolescents in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic: The NGOs, the school, the family and the civil society. 

5. Van Nguyen, L. et al. (2020) “Exposure to sexually explicit Internet material among adolescents: a study in Vietnam,” Health Psychology Report, 9(3), pp. 227–239. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5114/hpr.2020.99394.

6. Purple Vietnam (2023) Qualitative research report of Sex Education in Vietnam.

7. Purple Vietnam (2023) Product concept board testing report.

8. Purple Vietnam (2023) App-base Sex Education Vietnam market report.

9. KenResearch, A. et al. (2022) Vietnam e-learning industry, e-learning market, Market Research Report, Industry Research Report, Ken Research. Available at: https://www.kenresearch.com/blog/2019/08/vietnam-e-learning-market-research-report-ken-research/ (Accessed: 12 June 2023).

10. Vietnam’s smartphone market remained flat sequentially in 3q22, according to IDC (no date) IDC. Available at: https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP49843822 (Accessed: 12 June 2023).