500 Startups closes Vietnam fund at $14m

LPs come from across Europe, the US, and Asia, with South Korea playing a prominent role. Korean backers include online retailer GS Shop, electronics company Humax, and Ncore Ventures, an investment arm of plastics company NPC.

The fund, which launched in early 2016, has invested $3 million in 36 start-ups to date across segments including e-commerce, educational, and blockchain. According to Eddie Thai, a partner at 500 Startups, two companies have gone on to raise additional funding from Sequoia Capital and one has been acquired.

“In our view, these are just early signals in a long journey for our founders and for us,” Thai said in a statement. “Though we never doubted that Vietnamese start-ups could do well, the speed at which companies are hitting these milestones has been pleasantly surprising and encouraging.”

500 Startups Vietnam will use its increased corpus to pursue a number of strategic changes, including increasing the size of deployments from a range of $50,000-100,000 per deal so far to as much as $250,000 per deal. The fund has hired four team members since September and aims to hire up to four more in the near term.

Start-up development in Vietnam is considered a nascent industry but regionally differentiated by a double-hub structure provided by Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Other new actors in this space include ESP Capital, Startup Viet Partners, and Zone Startups Vietnam. Earlier this year, locally focused investor VinaCapital launched a $100 million VC unit.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Fundraising
• Venture
• Vietnam
• 500 Startups
• seed
• Technology