Coc Coc, or “Knock Knock” in English – a Vietnam-based search engine – has become one of the most popular browsers in Vietnam, with around 23 million users as of August.

Representatives of Coc Coc speak on the development of the local search engine

Le Van Thanh, co-founder of Coc Coc, said that in the local market, the browser has made strong leaps, just behind Google’s Chrome and has surpassed all other browsers of foreign brands like Firefox.

Data from internet-monitoring firm StatCounter shows Chrome has taken the lead with 58.7% of users, followed by Coc Coc (26.6%) and Firefox (7.5%).

Thanh ascribed the strong growth to the integration of many features such as search, automatic punctuations, correct spelling suggestions, dictionaries, Facebook access, download and shopping suggestions among others.

The Vietnamese search engine, behind Google and Facebook, has made up around 20% of the online advertising market. The number of Coc Coc users has helped the company take the second place, accounting for 26.6%.

Not many countries worldwide develop their own Internet browser, according to Thanh.

Set up in 2010, Coc Coc launched the Coc Coc Internet browser in 2013. Germany’s media platform Hubert Burda Media injected US$14 million into the Vietnamese enterprise in 2015.

Peter Kennedy, chairman of Hubert Burda, said Coc Coc had respective growth rates of 100% in 2015 and 80% in 2016. The figure is estimated at 50% this year.

He said the company is very pleased with this investment. Vietnam is an attractive place to invest in, as online services are growing fast compared to other places, and the online community is very strong.

Thanh revealed Coc Coc reached the break-even point in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile, Kennedy added the current value of Coc Coc may be four or five times higher than the initial investment, but he could not determine its market value.

SGT