Investors are betting on this e-bike startup to electrify Vietnam’s roads

At first glance, some people would likely think that Dat Bike – a rising electronic motorbike startup based in Vietnam – is named after its founder. After all, Dat is a popular first name for men in the country.

But Nguyen Ba Canh Son didn’t have that in mind. He wants people to talk about “dat bike” instead of himself, despite having been compared to billionaire investor Elon Musk by local media. Slang for “that,” “dat” is often used to convey a sense of amazement.

Dat Bike co-founder and CEO Nguyen Ba Canh Son / Photo credit: Dat Bike

“At this moment, being profitable for us is not important,” Nguyen tells Tech in Asia in an interview. “We want to convert 200 million people in Southeast Asia to switch from gasoline to e-bikes.”

In the current economic environment, the first statement might be unusual. But Nguyen managed to convince investors to back him amid this funding winter.

Founded in 2019, Dat Bike has raised a total of US$16.5 million, including a recent US$8 million round led by returning investor Jungle Ventures that was announced last month. Nguyen says the company’s valuation has significantly surpassed US$32 million, which was VentureCap Insights’s estimate after Dat Bike’s previous round.

Earlier this month, Nguyen unveiled Dat Bike Weaver++ at a launch event in Ho Chi Minh City. The third version of Dat Bike, priced at 65.9 million dong ($US2,800), is advertised to travel 200 kilometers with only three hours of charging.

In comparison, a mid-priced Honda gasoline motorbike costs about 40 million dong (US$1,685). On the two-wheel electric vehicle (EV) front, VinFast’s most premium model costs 69.9 million dong (US$2,946).

Going niche

To the media, Nguyen perfectly fits the tech founder profile: He’s a former software engineer in Silicon Valley who taught himself how to build electric bikes by watching YouTube videos.

Nguyen wanted to design and manufacture what he describes as a “truly made-in-Vietnam electric bike,” which must be appealing and affordable enough to compete with gasoline motorbikes. To put this in perspective, Vietnam has more than 50 million motorbikes even though sales have plummeted amid the pandemic.

In 2019, the Dat Bike founder brought his idea and vision to the reality show Shark Tank Vietnam, got only a US$60,000 investment and was squarely criticized by one of the judges for having “the wrong product-market fit.”

Since then, however, his startup has shown that judges may not always know best. Without divulging its sale numbers, Dat Bike says it grew 10x in the past year and the number of orders has exceeded its manufacturing capacity of about 1,000 vehicles per month.

The latest version was launched earlier this month. / Photo credit: Dat Bike

Go mass market?