Announcing the establishment of VinaCapital Ventures with $100 million in early September, Don Lam, CEO of VinaCapital, said that VinaCapital will continue investments in technology startups, which it began doing 10 years ago with DFJ VinaCapital.

Previously, the investments of venture funds were mostly worth between tens and hundreds of thousand of dollars each. With the new fund, the value of investment deals may be up to $10 million each, and there is no limit for the time of holding.

Analysts commented that in Vietnam, real estate and manufacturing have received the most attention from the public and investors. However, some investors have realized that technology firms have the greatest potential for development.

Not only VinaCapital Ventures, but many other funds have also announced they will pour money into technology firms. Sendo, an e-commerce platform owned by FPT, has called for $51 million from eight strategic investors presided by SBI Holdings.

At the same time, Vntrip.vn, a hotel booking app has successfully called for $45 million worth of capital from IHAG Holding from Switzerland.

Vntrip, founded by an 8X entrepreneur – Le Dac Lam – once successfully called for $3 million worth of capital from the angel investor who is a former leader of Alibaba Group. It also received $10 million from foreign funds headed by Hendale Capital.

The money injected into Vntrip in the last three years has help turn Vntrip into the largest online hotel room booking system in Vietnam with 8,000 domestic travelers and more than 1 million hotels in other countries.

Funds diversify investment fields

According to Topica Founder Institute, in 2017, more than 90 investment deals headed for startups, a two-fold increase compared with 2016 with the total value of $291 million. It is estimated that the capital flow to technology firms in the first six months of 2018 has far exceeded the entire year of 2017.

JAMJA, which runs a search engine for discounts, has received investment worth VND20 billion from three South Korean investment funds, KB Investment, Nextrans, Bon Angles and Japanese Framgia.

Meanwhile, ESP Capital and Framgia have made pre-seed investment in Uiza.io, the cloud service platform for video and livestream

ESP Capital, with $20 million, which presented itself before the public 18 months ago, has invested in nine startups. Its CEO Le Hoang Uyen Vy said the fund will focus on medtech, edtech and B2C, a field which promises high growth rates.

As for VinaCapital Ventures, the $100 million fund has poured money into Logivan and FastGo. Both provide technological solutions to the transport industry.

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