In Mongolia, the process of purchasing a desired product online often resembles an adventure filled with uncertainties. Consumers have to painstakingly "hunt for goods" in the vast sea of information on social media and rely on unprotected personal transfers to complete transactions. This common predicament is precisely the reason why entrepreneur Otgonjargal Delgermurun founded the two - sided e - commerce platform Navch.

[Lack of payment trust: the biggest obstacle to Mongolia's e - commerce development]
The Mongolian e - commerce market is currently in its early stage. Offline retail dominates absolutely, and online transactions are highly fragmented. According to Statista data, the country's e - commerce market is expected to reach $521 million by 2025. However, most transactions are conducted on personal pages of social platforms such as Facebook, which suffer from three major pain points: high payment risks, low efficiency in product discovery, and difficulty in acquiring traffic. Although there are vertical e - commerce platforms like Shoppy.mn in the local market, their model of targeting high - end brands with high entry thresholds can hardly meet the mass consumption needs. The market urgently needs a platform that can provide a safe and trustworthy trading environment for both buyers and sellers.

[Building a self - developed escrow payment system to connect the "trust" infrastructure of banks]
The Navch project was officially launched in April 2025, starting with the construction of trust infrastructure. The team first overcame the most core technical barrier in Mongolian e - commerce - successfully connecting with the payment systems of all major banks in the country and independently developing an escrow transaction engine. This breakthrough means that the money paid by buyers will be temporarily held by the platform and will only be settled to sellers after the buyers confirm the receipt of goods, completely changing the traditional high - risk "pay first, ship later" model in the Mongolian market.

Based on this trust foundation, Navch has built a two - sided e - commerce platform, connecting sellers on one end and buyers on the other. It solves the problem of information fragmentation through a unified product information database. Its business model adopts a pure transaction commission system of 7% that is only charged after a successful transaction, which is deeply bound to the interests of merchants and greatly lowers the entry threshold.

[Verifying the supply - side demand at low cost, with a positive response from the merchant side]
With almost no marketing budget, the team demonstrated high - efficiency execution. Through precise social media operations and extremely low - cost advertising (spending only $100 on advertising to obtain more than 200 accurate merchant leads), Navch successfully attracted more than 200 real merchants to submit applications for entry. More than 40% of them are from provinces outside Ulaanbaatar, verifying the nationwide market demand. Meanwhile, the merchant - side application was downloaded more than 100 times, and the social media naturally accumulated more than 1,000 followers within one month, running through the growth model of the supply side at the minimum cost.

[The lean team focuses on urban - rural digitalization and seeks funds to launch the buyer side]
The Navch team consists of two core members. The founder, Otgonjargal Delgermurun, is an ethnic Chinese in Mongolia with a background in computer science from the Netherlands. Familiar with the mature e - commerce models in Central Europe, he is responsible for the overall strategy and the local market. The technical partner, Mohammed, holds dual computer degrees from Dubai and India and is in charge of full - stack development and bank payment connection. The team adopts an extremely lean model, with the founder receiving zero salary and the technical partner's income linked to the platform's transaction volume, ensuring that every cent of funds is used for business growth.

At the current stage, the platform has completed the cold start of the supply side. The biggest challenge lies in launching the growth engine on the buyer side. The team is seeking a $20,000 seed - round investment, planning to use the funds mainly in three aspects within nine months: 40% for launching market promotion on the buyer side, 30% for upgrading the web - version technology to lower the user conversion threshold, and 30% for improving the merchant operation and training system. The goal is to rapidly increase the number of active buyers on the platform by amplifying the proven low - cost customer - acquisition model, activate the merchant ecosystem waiting to enter, and achieve a positive cycle of the two - sided network.

In the long run, the team's strategy is to make Navch the "urban - rural two - way e - commerce" infrastructure connecting Ulaanbaatar and the provincial markets, ultimately filling the key gap in Mongolia's digital business ecosystem.

Published Date:2026-03-09