According to Shark Tank Vietnam, Nguyen Ngoc Thuy, chair of EGroup, and chair of Apax Holdings, the parent company of Apax English, participated in two seasons of the program. At that time, he was a Shark who made a high investment in startups.

Soya Garden was a startup that Thuy was interested in when he invested VND15 billion, including financial control rights with a  ownership ratio of 45 percent with VND11 billion of the 15 billion in bonds.

Thuy actually invested VND20 billion in the project. In 2019, Egroup raised its investment to VND45 billion in Soya Garden. In April 2019, the group announced an additional investment of VND55 billion, raising the total investment to VND100 billion, turning Soya Garden one of the biggest investment deals of Shark Tank Vietnam.

After rapid expansion, Soya Garden in 2020 had to close a series of shops because of the pandemic. On Soya Garden’s website, the chain now has only four sale points in Hanoi, including one franchised shop.

We Escape, another startup where Thuy injected capital, shut down in 2022. The startup successfully called for VND5 billion worth of capital in exchange for 36 percent of shares from Shark Thuy. Thuy invested six times higher than committed, investing to get 70 percent of shares. The other 30 percent belonged to the founders of the business model.

During the two years of pandemic, big retail rents had a heavy impact on We Escape. The chain had to shut more than a half of the shops and officially closed.

Pema, a startup, received VND3 billion in exchange for 80 percent of shares from Thuy, but it also had to shut down because of the pandemic.

Complaining about hot growth, Thuy’s business has met difficulties. At a meeting with VietNamNet, Thuy said the English teaching chain alone costs him VND100 billion and the enterprise lost VND1 trillion within six months.

“We are meeting financial difficulties at this moment. I did not anticipate so many difficulties. Our education system had to close the doors for nearly three years,” he said.

According to Thuy, before the pandemic, in 2019, the enterprise saw hot growth and he made heavy investment to open new centers. But several months later, Covid-19 broke out and the centers had to shut down.

Thuy said he is negotiating with investment funds, but this cannot be done overnight.

“The Covid-19 pandemic was the strongest blow on us in our business life. We should have had better reactions,” he said.

Duy Anh