Tiki signs loan deal with foreign fund

By Hung Le   September 15, 2019 | 04:39 pm PT
Tiki signs loan deal with foreign fund
Two men open Tiki packages in a music video sponsored by Tiki. Screenshot taken from Bac Phan MV on Youtube.
International debt finance fund Innoven Capital has announced credit deals with e-commerce company Tiki and UP Co-working Space.

The Southeast Asia- and India-focused venture lending firm recently made the announcement without disclosing the financial terms of either deal, its first ever in Vietnam. Innoven is backed by Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek Holdings and United Overseas Bank.

Tech in Asia, a media platform for Asia's tech communitiesquoted the company as saying it would continue to focus on opportunities in the country and is currently working on a few more deals there.

According to its website, Innoven has built a regional portfolio of over 40 companies across Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. In May it received $200 million from Temasek and UOB to invest in Asia.

Innoven Capital’s announcement of its investment in Tiki came immediately after Vietnamese gaming firm VNG last Friday revealed it has lost its entire VND506 billion ($22 million) investment in the e-commerce site.

Tiki’s biggest shareholder is JD.com, China’s second-biggest e-commerce firm behind Alibaba, after it made a series of investments for undisclosed sums to increase its ownership to 25.65 percent this year.

Tiki, like other e-commerce giants in the Vietnamese market, has been struggling to break even for years due to high operational costs in a competitive market.

It reported losses totaling VND380 billion ($16.4 million) in 2016 and 2017, and a record loss of VND757 billion ($32.75 million) last year.

Yet it was the second most visited site in Vietnam in the first half of 2019, with 33.7 million hits per month, according to market research firm iPrice.

UP Co-working Space, headquartered in Hanoi, was launched in March 2016, and is a startup which leases co-working office space in Hanoi, HCMC, and Bangkok.

 
 
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