MegaNet, the Cisco of Vietnam: ‘better quality than the US, and cheaper than China’

If you know the early history of Silicon Valley, you’re likely familiar with the story of Cisco. This megaton company started out from a young Stanford couple’s bedroom to become, at one point in 2000, a company worth US$500 billion. Back when the internet was in its adolescence (fyi, the internet was started in the 1970s), routers had an outsized importance. Cisco rode the coattails of the needs of the internet industry. If you wanted to connect, you had to get a router.

In Vietnam, where the internet is absolutely horrendous these days, getting the right routers and service in place is always a headache. This is where MegaNet comes in. The company not only designs its own routers but also sets up internet services.

MegaNet has been in hiding from the startup community for the last four years, mainly focused on building its router technology and securing vital contracts across the country. The company is totally self-funded by its founders, and by securing contracts with clients across the country. It silently secured clients in major Vietnamese airports, including Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh city, Da Nang, Nha Trang – as well as 15 major train stations. And this is just the first step.

For those interested in the technical side of what MegaNet does, the company installs its custom routers across a set area. The most common way of managing this is mesh networks, which run information across a series of nodes. This optimizes information flow across multiple routers and is one of the most commonly used systems in the world. But Duong says in Vietnam, this breaks apart when power outages are frequent and electricity is unreliable. Therefore, MegaNet employs a system where each router (and this requires lots of cables) is directly connected to the main node. With a mesh network, the nodes are distributed. In other words, if one node (or router) breaks, the system will automatically switch the user to another working router, which is directly connected to the internet. For Vietnam, according to Duong, this makes the system more robust.

Basically, MegaNet wants to provide very high quality and easy-to-use wifi service across the country for a very low cost. According to co-founder and COO, Anh Duong, they want to produce a product that is “better quality than the USA and cheaper than China.” MegaNet plans to do this by laying infrastructure (thousands/millions of routers) across the country that allows it to provide a massive wifi network wherever Vietnamese people go.

In order to make money from its (hopefully) superior internet connectivity, MegaNet is employing three revenue models:

• A subscription service that allows people to use MegaNet’s routers wherever they go
• A free wifi service that offers brands the opportunity to advertise
• A research and development division that creates better router technology and licenses it to major Vietnamese telcos

The company expects to break even by June of 2015, and will be fundraising around that time too. The team approximates that the market size for them is over $1 billion and can make 7 figures of revenue annually for each of their revenue models.