Successfully calling for tens of millions of dollars from the world’s large investment funds, Vietnamese startups did well in the Year of a Goat.
Six outstanding deals in 2015
1.Huy Vietnam, which runs Mon Hue (Hue City-style dishes), Pho Ong Hung (noodle soup served with beef or chicken) and Com Express (cooked rice) chains, with a high number of shops in HCM City and Hanoi, has become well known among the business circle after successfully calling for capital from Templeton Strategic Emerging Markets Fund IV.
Huy Vietnam received $65 million.
In early 2015, a rumor spread that Huy Vietnam was going to list its shares on Hong Kong’s stock market. However, Huy Vietnam’s representative denied the information.
2. In 2015, Hubert Burda, a German media group, announced the investment deal worth $14 million in Coc Coc, which owns one of the two best known search engines in Vietnam (the other one is Google).
| Successfully calling for tens of millions of dollars from the world’s large investment funds, Vietnamese startups did well in the Year of a Goat. |
Nguyen Thanh Binh, a co-founder of Coc Coc, noted that the German investor decided to invest in Coc Coc after considering an impressive growth rate obtained by Coc Coc.As such, the total amount of capital Coc Coc has called so far has reached $34 million.3. KAfe Group in 2015 announced it received $5.5 million in investment in the first round of a campaign to call for capital from investment funds in London and Hong Kong, including Cassia Investments, a fund which pours money into consumers goods manufacturing in South East Asia and China.KAfe said it would use the money to expand The KAfe chain throughout Vietnam. Four shops opened in HCM City in October in the first phase, while the number would reach 26 by the end of this year.4. Foody successfully called for capital from the US Tiger Global Investment in 2015. It did not reveal the amount of capital, but sources said the capital was “not small for a startup”.This was the fourth successful capital call campaign conducted by the company since its establishment in 2012.Foody is managed by Dang Hoang Minh, who is also a co-founder, who has experience with Hungry.vn website. Foody provides shared information and comments about restaurants and shops.5. Vietnam's food order startup Lozi in late December 2015 announced it received 7-digit funding from Golden Gate Ventures and DesignOne Japan.Prior to that, the startup once received investment from Vietnam Silicon Valley project and an angel investor from Singapore.6. Vexere.com, the online bus ticket booking system, established in July 2013, successfully called for investments from Japanese CyberAgent Ventures and Singaporean Pix Vine Capital.It declined to say how much it received.