mWork is Vietnam’s biggest mobile affiliate network with 20M download requests a month

If you’re talking about Vietnam’s domestic market, it’s likely that you’re familiar with two big players: Appota and VNG. VNG made it big in the desktop gaming space but has now transitioned aggressively into a mobile company with its chat app, Zalo. Appota, on the other hand, started out as a mobile company doing third-party app stores, and has opened up into other areas like its new mobile gaming social network, onClan. But when you look deeper into Vietnam’s mobile market, you’ll likely find mWork.

Earlier this year, we had an amazing talk with the two key founders of mWork and Appota. They were candid about the struggles of mobile startups and even revealed their insights into the future of the market. We’ve already looked closely at Appota but now we’d like to take the chance to look at mWork, which runs Vietnam’s biggest mobile affiliate network with over 70,000 publishers online and offline.

What does mWork do?

mWork was founded in 2011 and officially launched in January 2012 as a middleman connecting gaming companies, developers, and publishers. This means that mWork works closely with the gaming companies to bring their games to publishers that can then deliver games directly to users. mWork, at its core, is thus a business-to-business company. The end users, that play games that mWork ships, have no idea who mWork is. By February 2013, mWork had more than 10,000 publishers on its network. For a mobile market as budding as Vietnam, this is exceedingly fast.

See: Appota and mWork founders explain Vietnam’s mobile startup ecosystem (VIDEO)

But as mWork grew its affiliate base, after analyzing data and the greater market, they knew exactly where to invest more energy. The team started up three companies in the summer of 2013. First was Tofu, a smartphone games developer. Next came Wasabi, a company that localizes international smartphone games for the Vietnamese market, followed by 1Pay, a mobile online payment system. In other words, mWork now has an end-to-end B2B mobile ecosystem all in-house: from producing games to publishing, and paying for them.

This ecosystem has allowed mWork to achieve some staggering numbers. It partners with many of the mobile gaming companies in Vietnam, and ships more than 70 percent of the mobile games in the Vietnamese market. On a monthly basis, its games receive over 20 million download requests (to be clear, this is not actual downloads) for apps and games. This is in a country with about 22 million smartphone users.

The future of mWork

mWork is based in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Four of the early members, including the main founder, Tran Anh Dung, worked previously in FPT, the technology juggernaut of Vietnam, also based out of Hanoi. So it makes sense that this year, mWork launched AppSync.vn, a mobile assistant tool that allows people to preload apps and generally manage their smartphone. It has a desktop app, targeted at stores, that helps them load apps onto phones.

Interestingly, this falls right in line with mWork’s B2B mobile play. mWork works directly with these mobile stores. AppSync.vn basically makes preloading apps onto users’ phones much easier. This is a need that mWork identified by working deep in the business-to-business mobile space.

This also leads into what mWork plans next for the fall of 2014 – AppBoost.net, a mobile analytics platform that allows businesses to track their users’ behavior. It’s the first in-app cross promotion platform in Vietnam, similar to ChartBoost. mWork will also launch Gimi.vn, a loyalty program based on downloads, in October.

None of the aforementioned products will be restricted to Vietnam, as mWork has already launched in Indonesia and plans Thailand, and Malaysia in 2015.