Foody.vn raises series B to build the Yelp, OpenTable, and Foodpanda of Vietnam

Three years ago, we wrote about Foody, then still a young upstart struggling to be the Yelp of Vietnam. At the time Foody had 13,000 points of interest (mainly restaurants). By January last year, Foody hit over 45,000, and today it’s at 115,000 (comprising travel, beauty, healthcare, shopping, schools, and wedding services). So it’s rather timely that Foody is today announcing its latest series B funding along with publicly announcing its diversified business model.

In 2013, Foody raised a seed round from CyberAgent Ventures. This was followed by a series A with CyberAgent and Pix Vine Capital, a firm based out of Singapore. Today, Foody has raised an undiclosed seven-figure series B round from Garena’s investment arm. The money will go to growing Foody’s existing ecosystem considerably. It will expand its Table Now service, a restaurant table booking service, and Delivery Now, a food delivery platform. According to founder Minh Dang:

Foody is excited about this investment, and will continue build and improve products and services for people and local business!

Dzung Nguyen, head of Vietnam and Thailand for CyberAgent Ventures, says that Foody is the largest in Southeast Asia in terms of users and number of points of interests. He adds that Foody is slowly building an ecosystem transitioning from a media platform (Foody.vn) to a transactional platform: delivery and booking.

Given Foody’s numbers, it might well be able to do this:

• 115,000 points of interest
• 275 thousand reviews
• 1.5 million photos
• 1.9 million collections (lists of favorite places from users)
• 8 million monthly visitors
• 500 thousand app downloads

Regional horizons

Given that this is CyberAgent Ventures’ third portfolio announcement this month (series A round for VeXeRe and acquisition announcement of CleverAds), it looks like a hat trick for the investment firm. Naturally, Nguyen is bullish on Vietnam’s ecosystem.

Vietnam is an essential market for any company [going] regional. So a lot of investors are looking for the leading companies in Vietnam who can become a part of their regional strategy. That is why many big players are looking for leading startups or companies in Vietnam.

Thus, Foody is keen on becoming the top food platform in Vietnam, and it fits a local and regional strategic bill, with serious interests in attacking the rest of Southeast Asia with a hyperlocal strategy. Instead of building one website with multiple languages, Foody is keen on building localized sites in each country. So it’s likely we’ll see more rounds from Foody as it comes out of its comfort zone into other large markets in Southeast Asia. Its newest investor, Garena may be keen on this as well given its growing regional presence. Nick Nash, group president of Garena, elaborates: