Quadria Capital invests $90 million into Vietnam's mom and baby retailer Con Cung

Quadria Capital, Asia’s leading healthcare investment firm, this week announced the completion of its $90-million investment in Con Cung, Vietnam’s largest and fastest-growing mom and baby retail network.

The fund will be used to support Con Cung’s ambition to launch 2,000 local stores by 2025, expand its product portfolio, as well as develop an all-in-one super app that provides personalised products and services for over five million Vietnamese mothers.

Founded in 2011, Con Cung is a household name in the mother and baby products industry with over 600 fully-owned stores across 45 provinces and cities in Vietnam. The company retails over 2,000 products such as milk powder, diapers, bottled nutrition and vitamins, equipment, and baby fashion. It holds exclusive distribution rights for a number of international brands, including from Japan, the US, Australia, and South Korea, and actively collaborates with leading factories across Asia to develop and manufacture private-label childcare products that are safe, high-quality, and affordable.

“While traditional offline trade still occupies an important part of commerce in Vietnam, digitalisation is fast-changing consumer preferences and many Vietnamese mothers are shifting part of their spending towards e-commerce," said Minh Nguyen, chairman and co-founder of Con Cung.

“We aim to be the one-stop destination for mothers to fulfil their maternity and baby-care needs in a convenient and safe environment. To do so, we recognise the need to expand our retail channels, both online and offline, and create a holistic ecosystem to support mothers and families. We are fortunate that Quadria Capital shares our vision, and we look forward to tapping into Quadria’s network of leading consumer and healthcare companies to serve more families in Vietnam.”

“The has made our mission of empowering healthcare-focused companies even more crucial, especially in serving vulnerable populations such as growing families with infants and young children,” said Ewan Davis, managing director of Quadria Capital.

“Access to essential healthcare products and services is one such step. We see great potential in Con Cung to address such unmet needs and have lined up several collaborations to help them penetrate the health and wellness segment, as well as further develop better mother and child-centric products and services.”

Over the last four years, Con Cung has been growing exponentially at a compound annual growth rate of 70 per cent. It launched its first app in 2019 in response to an upsurge in mobile-based purchases and succeeded in doubling its store footprint between 2019 and 2021. Con Cung will also launch its first-ever 2,000-square-metre Super Center at Phu Dong 6 in January, which will feature all Con Cung products, a coffee shop, an integrated playground area, and one dedicated floor for infant care, nutrition, and consulting services provided by leading doctors and healthcare professionals.

“We plan to open one Super Center per month with a target to reach 200-300 of such stores across Vietnam,” said Tien Luu, CEO and co-Founder of Con Cung.

Besides enabling Con Cung to leverage its complementary network of portfolio companies such as FV Hospital – one of the leading hospital platforms in Vietnam – Quadria Capital is also bringing in a leading global retail expert with deep familiarity with the Vietnam retail scene.

Robert Willett the former CEO of Best Buy International and global managing partner of Accenture’s Retail Practice and a member of its executive committee. He is currently a strategic adviser, board member, and investor of many of the best tech and retail operations around the world and will join the board of directors at Con Cung as part of Quadria’s investment.

“The retail industry is constantly innovating and evolving, it’s exciting to be a part of this sector that is always striving to undertake a comprehensive approach to provide care and education to its customers through a personalised customer-centric, omni-channel experience which is powered by nimble online and offline expansion strategies," Willet said.

"I look forward to supporting the Con Cung team in this exciting era of change to provide the people of this wonderful country with a world-class proposition.”

The investment is the latest in a series of healthcare and consumer health investments that Quadria Capital has made in Asia just 18 months after the successful closure of its oversubscribed $595 million Quadria Capital Fund II.

In 2021, the firm invested in Encube Ethicals, an India-based global manufacturer of topical drugs; Nobel Hygiene, India’s largest private manufacturer of disposable hygiene products; and PT Medikaloka Hermina Tbk, one of the largest private hospital groups in Indonesia.

Given the rapid deployment of that fund, Quadria is preparing to raise the Quadria Capital Fund III to continue its mission of supporting healthcare and consumer-health related companies in the region.