Funding Societies expand into Vietnam’s provinces

Venture funding in Southeast Asia to the moon and back is a “very vey very” good opportunity for a new lending platform like Funding Societies to enter the Vietnam market, said Ryan Galloway – Country Director for Funding Societies in Vietnam. 

Kelvin Teo and Ryan Galloway from Funding Societies Vietnam

The stock market crashing in the USA impacts the capital markets around the world. This forces businesses to look for safer forms of capital while banks are still hesitant to lend. Same thing happens in Vietnam. That’s why it’s a great opportunity for Funding Societies in this country when startups are craving for funding to recover after two years suffered from the pandemic, said Ryan.

Venture funding in the SEA declined to 36.3 billion USD in the first quarter, a 7 percent drop compared to the same period last year, and 31 percent dip compared to the last quarter of 2021, according to Crunchbase. 

Last year, a record of over 1.3 billion USD was poured into Vietnamese startups making the country rank third in the group of the most dynamic innovative startup ecosystems in Southeast Asia, after Indonesia and Singapore. Most of the investment capital pumped into startups in fintech, game, education, health care, and e-commerce, according to Ministry of Finance.

However, the funding gap of 58 billion USD should be given to qualifying SMEs that are potentially not used to formal finance, according to Ryan. And he describes this number as 24% of the total market capitalization for both the HCMC and Hanoi stock exchanges, and 21% of the total GDP of Vietnam. 

Aiming to lend to the unserved and underserved clients of the banks which are SMEs and mSMEs, Funding Societies Vietnam will not compete in the banking sector, its Country Director highlighted by the strategy in Vietnam. It will be actively looking for banks to work with provincial governments to support its growth. 

Funding Societies Vietnam Singapore-based digital finance platform provides access to capital for SMEs and mSMEs Vietnamese tech firm VNG Corporation invested US$22.5 million in Funding Societies recently. will focus funding to agribusiness, education, manufacturing sectors – the absolute backbone of the Vietnamese economy. Later, it  is going to be a family owned pop-up shop, restaurants, boba tea joints… The Country Director also shared that Funding Societies Vietnam will penetrate provinces in Vietnam along with their e-commerce partners.

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Source: Vietnam Insider