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Speak to almost anyone in the Southeast Asian startup scene and they’ll be quick to crown Singapore or Indonesia as the region’s startup hub. But whenever we cover a company from Vietnam, it never fails to grab my attention.
This week, VNLife raised a monumental US$250 million in series B funding, which is Vietnam’s largest funding round to date. Even though the company said it had already gone “north of a unicorn” after securing an undeclared investment in 2019, this latest round cements VNLife’s place as the country’s second unicorn.
VNLife operates VNPay, the digital payments firm behind the mobile apps of 22 banks across Vietnam. While the company has outpaced most of the competition in the country’s digital payments industry when it comes to securing funding, there’s still room for more players to penetrate the potentially lucrative Vietnamese fintech scene as a large portion of the nation’s population is still underserved by financial institutions.
You can find all other important investment deals of note over the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.
Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that took place recently.
BIGGEST DEALS BY COUNTRY
🇮🇳 Unacademy: The Indian edtech firm raised US$440 million from General Atlantic, SoftBank Vision Fund, Temasek Holdings, and Tiger Global Management in a series F funding round.
🇨🇳 Inceptio: The Chinese self-driving tech firm scored US$270 million from Broad Vision Fund, CATL, CMB International, CMG-SDIC Investment, Deppon, IDG Capital, JD Logistics, Meituan, and NIO Capital in a series B funding round.
🇻🇳 VNLife: The parent company of Vietnamese fintech platform VNPay got US$250 million in a series B funding round from Dragoneer Investment Group, EDBI, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, General Atlantic, PayPal Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund.
🇸🇬 Matrixport: The crypto finance venture based in Singapore bagged US$100 million in series C money from C Ventures, DST Global, and K3 Ventures.
🇯🇵 Soda: The Japanese online sneaker marketplace raised US$56.4 million in a series C funding round from Altos Ventures, Jafco, Kream, and SoftBank Ventures Asia.
Lists of most active investors in the region
List of top-funded startups in Asia
List of largest exits in Asia
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