Vietnamese startups seek foreign investment in Saigon roadshow

By Truong Sanh   April 24, 2017 | 09:14 pm PT
Founders of six Vietnamese starups, from dating app to cricket-based food production, are scheduled to hold talks to seek investment in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday.

CEOs and founders of six Vietnamese startups in various areas from dating and personal styling to learning English and raising crickets for protein source will present themselves to investors in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday, organizers said.

The startup executives will use CrowdFundHer Live to access new knowledge, raise funds and receive valuable responses to improve their products, said Mouna Aouri Langendorf, the creator of Woomentum, the event organizer.

Woomentum is a community-cum-crowdfunding platform based in Singapore for women who are founders and entrepreneurs. Its four sister events held in Singapore received support from the likes of Bloomberg, Google and the Hub Singapore, helped draw more than 600 participants and raised S$200,000 ($143,500) for 23 tech startups.

Starups with guests and investors at a CrowdFundHer Live event. Photo courtesy of Woomentum

Starups with guests and investors at a CrowdFundHer Live event. Photo courtesy of Woomentum

Rudicaf, a subscription-based dating app in Vietnam for high profile single professionals, is one of the startups in the line-up. CEO Vu Nguyen Anh, who has many years of experience with dating, is an MC and was a potential competitor at the “21st Century Women” contest in 2006.

Each startup will have eight minutes to introduce themselves and convince the audience why they matter. Investors and interested people will interact with the starup teams through a group-chat program facilitated by Woomentum.

Phleek is a fashion consultant service and Vietnam's first personal styling app. It learns about users' fashion taste by analyzing their choices based on Tinder-style swipes for outfits. Phleek then connects them to their own personal stylist, who will be sending weekly outfit recommendations which users can browse and purchase.

Giki! is an educational app that helps English learners master thousands of difficult academic words at rocket speed, using techniques from Cambridge’s memory and linguistics experts. Students can ace their IELTS, GRE, TOEIC tests easily and save hundreds of hours with Giki!

Cricketone, an Agritech business, or Insect (cricket) protein production, acquires used shipping containers and equips them with technologies so that everyone can rear crickets fed on agricultural by-products and waste efficiently. It then leases the containers to farmers and promises to buy all their output for processing into protein for human and animal consumption.

DropDeck is a web platform that helps investors source and evaluate starups in the fastest and most informed way, also a tool for entrepreneurs to prepare and arrange information in the most investor-centric way to save time and improve their chance of getting funded.

Fastsell is a mobile app that allows you to list, discover and buy things from people around you quickly, reliably and securely. The app has received more than 100,000 downloads so far.

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Representative of a starup speaks at a CrownFundHer Live event in Singapore. Photo courtesy of Woomentum

Among guests invited to the Tuesday event are Adrian Tan, director of Vietnam Innovative Startup Accelerator and Ngo Thuy Ngoc Tu, co-founder of YOLA Language Center.

They will be joined by Nguyen Ngoc Dung, vice president of Vietnam E-Commerce Association (VECOM), Violet Lim, CEO of dating app Lunch Actually and Michael Blakey, two of the most experienced angel investors in the Singapore and U.K. startup scenes and managing partner of Cocoon Capital.

The program is held with support from the Vietnam E-Commerce Association, the Vietnam Starup Foundation, Mat Bao Corporation, Baker McKenzie, Citylinks, VnExpress and other units.

The event will be held at Dreamplex 2, 195 Dien Bien Phu Street, Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City. Doors will open from 6:30 p.m. and fundraising activities will start after one hour. Awards and support will be announced by 9:30 p.m. and entertainment activities will continue for the next hour.

 
 
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