On July 11th, 2019, at the Renaissance Riverside Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, VIISA celebrated the completion of the fifth batch of its 4-month accelerator program with the Investment Day. The invitation-only event welcomed more than 100 active and accredited investors, corporations and startup community builders.
Batch 5 of Accelerator Program consists of 3 startups: VDES, Loglag and SaveMoney. One interesting common point in this batch is they are all building platform. They are:
- Loglag provides a truck and container booking platform with Big Data, AI techniques applied. By leveraging mobile connectivity, Loglag connects drivers and fleet owners to cargos and customers in order to make the logistics and transportation industry in Vietnam more accessible.
- SaveMoney provides a full insurance service provider who combines an innovative insurance platform technology with high-quality brokerage advisory. SaveMoney's solution is a highly flexible and highly scalable digital insurance platform with an integrated B2C advisory process using Big data, giving the possibility to design, implement and roll-out existing and new insurance services within 3 months.
- VDES: A one-stop-shop marketplace, VDES connects event venues and event suppliers to customers in the simplest way with advanced technology including Big Data, Machine Learning, and Virtual Reality. By providing the ecosystem service, customers can save 80% time & 30% cost in all booking processes and receive the best price guarantee. In addition, VDES supports vendors to increase their competitive advantage in the market, reduce cost and be more effective in managing businesses.
“I am proud of what these amazing founders have overcome and developed throughout the program. In order to make these changes happen, startups in Batch 5 have actively harnessed and created large, scalable networks of users and resources that can be accessed on-demand. There are real products, real technologies that generated more than 3,000 transactions within 3 months. On the other hand, the network effects these startups built touches more than 500.000 people in Vietnam. With their solution and product, the startups are helping customers in reducing time and transaction costs, increase revenue by enabling externalized innovation.”, said Mr. Hieu Vo, CFO at VIISA kick-started the Investment Day in the afternoon with a proud voice talking about Batch 5 startups:
“Startups in Batch 5 possess remarkable domain expertise and a deep understanding of the local market; those will most definitely forge their paths in their respective industries. I’ve enjoyed being on the ground floor of innovation and disruption, as well as having the honor to provide guidance to the next generation of Vietnamese entrepreneurs.”, said Mr. Marc Djandji, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at VIISA
The startup in batch 5 has gone through intensive training. With 7 training sessions, 10 experts and more than 150 working hours with VIISA in 12 weeks, from Product/Market Fit to help the startups see the world differently, inspire new ways to create value for customers, to closing business and investment deals, and developing scalable business models. The startups also received seed fund from VIISA and benefited from VIISA partners such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Payoo, MoonLab Co-working space,....). They came on stage at VIISA Investment Day #5, presenting real businesses with real customers, recording the high growth and strong interest from top-tier investors in less than 3 months. The promising startups will be able to get a follow-on funding of up to $200,000 from VIISA when they secure a new round of funding from other investors.
“It was exciting three months, intensive VIISA mentors and training programs are extremely valuable and help our business improved a lot for all aspects from finance, models and product development. We want to send a special thanks to Ms. Kelly Tran (Entrepreneur-in-Residence at VIISA), who welcome us to join VIISA family and introduce us to our tech partner Appable. The tech team is super supporting and plays an important role in bringing VDEs platform to the next level. And the most important, VIISA team members bring positive energy and mental support and advice to our founders regardless of time, VIISA family makes us feel more confident, knowing that we are not alone and can turn the impossible become possible. VIISA is one of the best accelerators we have enrolled so far, we recommend startups to join and use this opportunity to improve and grow your startup in a short period of time”, said Ms. Ann Nguyen, CEO at VDES - Batch 5 startup
In addition, the event also highlighted by a Panel Discussion name “The journey to Series A”, moderated by Marc Djandji - VIISA’s EiR and starring Khoi Nguyen - CEO at WeFit, Hieu Truong - CEO at UrBox, Dat Nguyen - CEO at TheBank
Since building a large tech company typically requires millions of dollars, the availability of follow-on financing is a crucial element of any tech ecosystem. And while there are startups that become profitable businesses after having only raised a seed round, those are exceptions, and almost every tech startup that raises a seed round aspires to raise a Series A round 12–24 months later.
Through this panel discussion, TheBank, the first online financial advisory website in Vietnam, was proud to mention about the successfully pre-Serie A in the first half of 2019. TheBank has significant performance growth with Traffic increased 20% and revenue increased 10% from April to May, this year. Wefit has graduated the first batch of VIISA Acceleration Program and has successfully raised the pre-Serie A round. Wefit has achieved revenue of first half 2019 higher than 85% compared to the same period of 2018. Its new product “WeJoy” of beauty service has impressive growth in recent months with sales growth in May higher than in April 153%. Finally, WisePass already expanded outside Vietnam, operating in 4 cities (Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Bangkok, and Manila; targeting Jakarta next); they have also closed some significant partnerships with prominent partners such as Marriott Group, CGV, Starbucks, and Citibank.
“After they graduating Accelerator program, we hope that they keep building great companies”, said Mr. Duc Tran, CEO at VIISA at the closing speech. Finally, Mr. Duc called for startups to participate in the Accelerator Program Batch 6 at VIISA at the website www.viisa.vn. VIISA Accelerator Program Batch 6 is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2019.
