Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - As the world goes digital at amind-boggling pace, more and more everyday habits are being performedhand-held, all at the touch of a button through smart phones.

Ordering a taxi, booking a train ticket orpaying utility bills, are made super simple thanks to improving technology.

Such high-tech has led to a rapid change ofhabits by many people who find ordering online helps them juggle their busylifestyles.

Thirty-year-old Nguyen Thuy Mai, returnshome from work at 7.30pm, often the same time as her grocery order turns up.

Pork, vegetables and all the ingredients sheneeds to cook dinner arrive at her doorstep in Hanoi’s Cau Giay district and shehasn’t set foot inside a supermarket.

For the relatively small charge of between25,000 VND (1.1 USD) to 50,000 VND, she never needed to.

Pham Thi Le, 65, on theother hand has a different way to shop, believing ordering online is lazy.

“Why don’t they just spend less than 30 minutes toselect what they want in the nearest market for dinner,” she said. “Is that too much for them?”

Maybe it is generational, or perhaps Le’s dailyroutine allows her to shop first hand whereas Mai’s doesn’t.

Either way, personal shopping, particularly groceryshopping, is becoming more and more popular with local start-ups competing fora slice of the pie.

Partnering with supermarkets, shops, anddelivery bikes, start-ups develop fresh food shopping apps that enablecustomers to choose the food they want from the supermarket catalogues or fromthe list of food items in shops. The service will help buy the selected itemsand bring them to the customer's destination within a few hours.

bTaskee, a company which provides domestic helpin Vietnam, recently surveyed more than 100,000 of their customers. The companyfound more than 20 percent needs the service.Andthey believe this number will grow.

World Bank predicts by 2026, 26 percent ofVietnamese will be middle class, double the number today. As a result, more andmore people will turn to technology.

Already in Hanoi and HCM City, there is stiffcompetition in shopping apps.

Faly Mart, Citiship, Alocho, Suma.vn, Chopp.vn,disieuthi.vn, Now and LosMart to name but a few. And Grab is getting in on theact as well, launching a similar service called GrabAssistant.

This month start-up HeyU launched amulti-service platform including buying groceries in HCM City after two yearsworking as platform connecting shippers and sellers in Hanoi.

Nguyen Minh Truong, founder ofChopp, told Viet Nam News: "Shopping-for-customer is big and until now noone can say they have cornered the market.”

According to Truong, fooddelivery presents unique challenges compared to the delivery of other goods,such as clothes and footwear. Perishable items require stricter delivery timeswhich meant many big delivery firms failed to recognise the market’s potentialbefore.

So Truong thinks the qualityof the service will be key to keeping the customers. Chopp, which partners with50 supermarkets and shops in HCM City and serves 11,000 transactions per month,is proud of its fast delivery in one hour.

Seeing the potential, not only the start-ups,two big supermarkets of Vinmart, Lotte have poured money in their own apps ofAdayroi and SpeedL respectively to serve the online market. They deliver toonline customers within two hours and the service is free for orders over 150,000 VND (6.4 USD)for SpeedL and 200,000 VND (8.6 USD)for Adayroi.

“Online supermarkets help me not waste timequeuing in crowded markets, especially during the rush hour plus I don’t needto pay the delivery fee,” Nguyen Minh Ngoc a regularonline customer of Lotte Mart said.

Two years ago, the first ever service inVietnam, the greenbag.vn closed due to difficulties. However, it seems this didnot deter other companies throwing their hats into the ring.

In July, market research company KantarWorldpanel Vietnam announced Vietnam, whosepopulation of more than 90 million, as the 14th highest number of internetusers in the world with 66 percent of its population online.

According to a report by Google and Temasek, thesize of the Vietnamese e-commerce market will increase by 5.3 times in the nextseven years from 2.8 billion USD in 2018 to 15billion USD in 2025.

There are no guarantees as to what exactly thefuture holds, but one thing is for sure, it will all be very, very different./.