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STARTUPS

The Ho Chi Minh City-based dental network Kim Dental received $24 million in a Series B funding
round on February 3 from ABC World Asia, an Asia-focused impact investment private equity (PE)
fund. Kim Dental will expand its system and improve the customer experience by upgrading
standards in equipment and service quality, including the upgrading of 19 clinics in four cities
around Vietnam. The investment will also help Kim Dental work on the delivery of affordable and
reliable oral healthcare services in Vietnam. “Improvements to health outcomes are the key impact
focus for us,” said Mr. David Heng, CEO of ABC World Asia. “We look forward to supporting Kim
Dental in its mission as it continues to contribute to universal health coverage.”

ThinkZone has officially announced applications for the fourth-stage startup accelerator program for
early-stage startups in Vietnam, with $50 million to $500 million in direct investment and other
support packages worth more than $50 million from partners including Amazon Web Services,
Toong, MISA, HubSpot, and FPT Play. In this fourth course, with its positioning as a global startup
accelerator, ThinkZone Accelerator Batch 4 will continue to support and develop early-stage technology
startups from a variety of fields, including e-commerce, healthtech, edtech, fintech, logistics, and
supply chains. In particular, it will have a full array of training for startups from fintech and frontier
tech fields, with training and consulting activities to help startups access international markets.
Startups in ThinkZone Accelerator can approach abundant investment funds and opportunities.

The VIoT Technology Joint Stock Company (VIoT) has signed a cooperation deal with Philips
Professional Display Solutions (PPDS) to expand its DiGiAds Solution. VIoT will introduce
advertising display solutions to customers, including PPDS’s dedicated monitors. “For a startup
like us, the chance of being chosen to cooperate with a large corporation like Philips because of our
creative capacity in leading solutions and total solutions that meet the needs of business customers
is a great opportunity,” said Mr. Tran Van Khiem, Chief of Marketing at VIoT. “Expanding the
partnership with PPDS will power VIoT’s DiGiAds solution.” PPDS is the leading electronics group
in the world and VIoT is one of its two distributors in Vietnam. This is also a new step forward for
VIoT’s DigiAds solution to reach customers.

Go2Joy, a Vietnam-based hotel booking startup, has successfully raised $2.3 million in Series A+
from HB Investments as the lead investor and Platform Partners Asset Management. The company
provides information on hotels in Vietnam to help users make reservations. Customers can make
payments directly or through a bank account, credit card, or e-wallet such as Payoo, MoMo, or
OnePay. “We will use this new funding to develop further and apply high-technology to the
domestic travel experience in Vietnam,” said Mr. Simon Byun, CEO of Go2Joy. He added that the
Covid-19 pandemic has had significant consequences for the tourism industry, but Go2Joy adapted
by changing its strategies and optimizing online channels to maintain business and long-term
development. Mr. Bae Sung Hwan, Director of HB Investment, said domestic tourism is growing
and Go2Joy has anticipated this new trend.

English Language Speech Assistant (ELSA), an edtech startup, has announced it raised $15 million in
Series B funding, co-led by the Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Vietnam Investments
Group (VI Group). Mr. Van Dinh Hong Vu, Co-founder and CEO of ELSA, said it will use the capital
to boost their growth in the Latin American market and build a B2B (business-to-business)
platform, allowing them to provide coaching services to employees and students at companies and
organizations. He also mentioned that many people wish to improve their spoken English, as this
increases their career opportunities and income. “This has driven the need to learn English in
Vietnam, India and Brazil, and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic we saw great demand in
markets such as Latin America,” he said. ELSA has the advantage of using artificial intelligence (AI)
speech recognition technology, which has allowed the app to collect and analyze a huge amount of
data from millions of English accents over the last few years.

Loship,a fast-growing one-hour-delivery e-commerce startup, has announced its latest investment,
from Skype co-founder Mr. Jaan Tallinn, who participated through his investment vehicle MetaPlanet
Holdings. The capital injection marks Loship as the first portfolio company of MetaPlanet in
Vietnam and Southeast Asia; the world’s next tech hubs. The latest fundraising, which is part of the
startup’s Series C round, comes just four months after its undisclosed bridge round led by Vulpes
Investment Management. The new funding will fuel its path to becoming Vietnam’s leading one-
hour-delivery e-commerce platform. “MetaPlanet is planning to pay more attention to rapidly
growing economies in Southeast Asia, so I’m delighted to be off to a strong start in Vietnam by
adding Loship as our first portfolio company there,” said Mr. Tallinn.

MARCH 2021 | VIETNAM ECONOMIC TIMES | 39