Do Ventures raises $28 million to invest in Vietnamese startups

September 08, 2020 | 19:22

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New investment firm Do Ventures has raised $28 million for its Do Ventures Fund I to invest in Vietnamese tech startups.

do ventures raises 28 million to invest in vietnamese startups

Do Ventures debuted in Vietnam with $50 million

Do Ventures raised more than half of its fundraising goal of $50 million from institutional investors from Korea and Singapore, including NAVER, Sea Group (NYSE:SE), Vertex Holdings, and Woowa Brothers.

Do Ventures was co-founded by Le Hoang Uyen Vy, former CEO of Vietnamese e-commerce site Adayroi.com and general partner at ESP Capital, along with Manh Dung Nguyen (Dzung), who formerly worked as a director at venture capital firm CyberAgent Capital in Vietnam and Thailand.

Founded early this year, Do Ventures plans to make investments in Vietnamese startups that capitalise on Vietnam’s younger population and fast-growing middle-class. The fund will be deployed to invest in two tiers of companies in Vietnam.

The first tier includes business-to-consumer (B2C) platforms that “complement an effective ecosystem of services around young customers such as education, healthcare, and social commerce due to significant changes in customer behaviour after COVID-19.”

The second tier focuses on regionally-scaled business-to-business (B2B) platforms that “create synergies for tier 1 portfolio companies and enable these companies to scale regionally.” This includes companies that offer software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, data management, and e-commerce services.

The Vietnamese ecosystem has been widely seen as one of the hottest destinations for tech startups and investors, driven by an emerging middle-class, robust growth in the digital economy, and a strong entrepreneurial culture. According to the Google-Temasek-Bain report released in 2019, Vietnam's digital economy is expected to top $43 billion by 2025, with e-commerce at the forefront of this transformation.

By Thanh Van

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