Vietnam's ThinkZone Ventures looks to raise $50 million

The announcement comes a year after the business launched its second fund for $60 million, making it the biggest indigenous venture capital vehicle supported by local companies. Local LPs such as IPA Investments, Phu Thai Holdings, and Stavian Group contributed to the fund, which intends to invest in pre-seed through Series A stage digital businesses.

The venture capital company will run both funds at the same time, even though their goals are different. Fund II will focus on chances in Vietnam, while Fund III will look for global startups with a team, clients, and income from the Vietnamese market.

The latter will be open to international startups that hire Vietnamese workers or build their first product in Vietnam to save money or test the market before going global.

Even though things are hard right now, ThinkZone Ventures wants to have its first close by the end of this year or the beginning of 2024.

The fund is still interested in fintech, education tech, health tech, and software-as-a-service. ThinkZone thinks that these four areas are important for any market or country because they make financial services more accessible, improve education, raise living standards, and make digital change more efficient.

ThinkZone Ventures just appointed Hoang Nguyen as a new partner and head of investments as it looks to grow its global reach. Hoang has more than 10 years of experience in finance and investments. He has worked at Deloitte Vietnam Financial Advisory and Sovico Group.

ThinkZone is one of the most busy local venture capital firms. It has 15 startups in its portfolio, including the fintech companies GIMO and Fundiin and the ed tech startup Edupia.

GIMO just revealed that its Series A round, which raised $17.1 million, is over. Earlier, Edupia's Series A round, which was led by Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, raised $14 million.

ThinkZone Ventures started the Global Minds Accelerator program in 2022, with TNB Aura Vietnam Scout as a strategic partner to co-invest, teach, and help Vietnamese tech startups.

As Vietnam's tech startup environment grows, local venture capital firms like Ascend Vietnam Ventures, Do Ventures, Touchstone, Next100, Viet Valley Ventures, VIC Partners, Teko Ventures, and FEBE Ventures have started to appear.

DealStreetAsia said that VinaCapital Ventures, the venture capital part of Vietnam-based asset manager VinaCapital, plans to start its second $100 million fund, which will focus on offering growth capital.

Last year, AVV's main early-stage venture capital fund, AVV Alpha, made more than the $50 million goal it had set for itself.

Source: Nikkei Asia