A Vietnamese startup raised $1.6 million to maintain its dating app

Fika, a dating app in Vietnam, raised $1.6 million. This seed round was led by VNV Global. Fika will expand the team, improve AI, and develop a user base in Vietnam. This app is designed specifically for Vietnam, has 750,000 downloads, 40% of users are female. This Vietnamese startup will also enter other Asian markets. This app is reintroducing dating spot recommendations after a long nationwide lockdown. This platform will also add self-developed features. Fika is trying to improve the matchmaking algorithm suitable for different markets.

A Vietnamese startup raised $670,000 to build its digitised B2B platform

EI Industrial raised $670,000. This seed round was led by Cocoon Capital with participation from BEENEXT. Launched in 2020, EI Industrial is the industrial B2B e-commerce platform in Vietnam. This platform promotes the digitization of the purchasing process in Vietnam. EI Industrial will build a faster and more user-friendly technology platform. The platform will also expand the technology pool that drives growth.

“Vietnamese Canva” stopped its operation

DesignBold was once called the “second Flappy Bird” of Vietnam. This design startup announced to close all services from October 25, 2021. DesignBold, founded in the same year of 2016 as Canva, is currently valued at around $19 billion. DesignBold “empowers people to create visual content limited only by their imagination”. DesignBold faces many problems such as a wave of technology and design tools development. The market demands change. This startup has not raised any fund in the past 5 years.

A VC fund is established for Vietnamese startup blockchains

Alpha Moon Capital is a high-tech venture capital with a management scale of $10 million. This VC dedicated to blockchain projects has just launched in Vietnam. Nguyen Ngoc Nam has 10 years of venture capital investment in Vietnamese and Singaporean technology startups. He established this fund to find and support Vietnamese blockchain, fintech and decentralised finance startups. Alpha Moon Capital has invested in over 20 projects. These include many Vietnamese gamefi projects such as Heroes Empires, Heroverse, Warena,… and NFT projects like DareNFT. The fund will continue to disburse faster, promoting the development of Vietnam’s blockchain ecosystem.

MoMo expands into advertisement

MoMo formed a strategic partnership with MediaDonuts. This is a company specialising in providing leading marketing solutions in the region. This is a big step for MoMo in the field of advertising. This is the field that was once likened to Grab’s “golden egg”. MediaDonuts is also a distribution partner of GrabAds, Grab’s advertising business. MoMo and MediaDonuts will focus on optimising services and finding target customers. Both sides will develop products to enhance brand recognition with millions of MoMo customers. MediaDonuts will replace MoMo to exploit and search for advertising partners on MoMo. 

Sources of information include CafeBiz and CafeF.