This is no joke: Vietnam’s funniest website just got invested [UPDATE]

UPDATE: It has surfaced on ICTnews that, according to founder of HaiVL, Vo Thanh Quang, HaiVL was not actually acquired, but invested in by 24H. This may put the valuation of HaiVL much higher than the assumed US$1.5 million. Thus, this is good news for the site and for the larger Vietnamese ecosystem.

Content is a largely untapped frontier in Vietnam. If you look closely at Vietnam’s online advertising spend, it’s dominated by news sites. Vietnamese netizens are thirsty for fresher content. But there aren’t that many sites that tap into this. That’s why HaiVL has such an inspiring story for Vietnamese media entrepreneurs.

HaiVL basically took the 9gag model and brought it to Vietnam. With an extremely passionate content team and social media whizzes, within one year the site was hitting two million unique visits per day. Two years later, the site is already hitting four million unique visits per day. 50 percent of those are from people who are typing “HaiVL” directly into the browser. This is unprecedented for the country. HaiVL has come to be known as the number one site Vietnamese people go to for a laugh.

Today, news popped up that HaiVL got acquired by local media giant 24H for a rumored US$1.5 million.

See: HaiVL: Vietnam’s Funniest Website Gets 2 Million Hits Per Day After Just 1 Year

If correct, that acquisition total is troubling. In 2012, VNG, Vietnam’s biggest consumer tech company, acquired local media site BaoMoi for an estimated US$6 million. So you’d expect such an acquisition this year to attract a larger sum – especially since what HaiVL has done is basically proven that this content model can actually work in Vietnam. That’s in a nation where traditional online media sites dominate.

I would have put the price tag around US$3 million to US$4 million, but what do I know. The question now is, would an investor really want to invest in a media startup if the returns in Vietnam are potentially so low?

The success of HaiVL with the public clearly shows that Vietnamese users are still hungry for more content. And there are new sites in various areas meeting this demand, from wedding-related content to medical articles to entertainment news. Hopefully, once they’re ready to exit, they’ll go for at more than a couple of million dollars.