Golden Gate Ventures to open two offices in Vietnam

Southeast Asian VC fund Golden Gate Ventures said it will open two offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi as it plans to increase investments in Vietnam’s startup ecosystem. 

Golden Gate Ventures founding partner Vinnie Lauria / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

The VC also signed an agreement with the Vietnam National Innovation Center (NIC) to bring investments into the market and help Vietnamese startups build regional businesses. 

Golden Gate Ventures currently has offices in Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The company’s founding partner, Vinnie Lauira, said it had planned to establish offices in Vietnam in 2019 while co-hosting the first Vietnam Venture Summit. 

The country is catching up with Singapore and Indonesia in terms of investments, seeing a record number of investments worth US$1.4 billion in 2021 – 1.6x higher than the previous record of US$874 million in 2019, according to the Vietnam Innovation & Tech Investment report 2021.

See also: The pitfalls of Vietnam’s GameFi sensation

Vietnam has been attracting investments over the past few years amid forecasts of high growth in domestic consumption, a rapidly growing middle-class population in Southeast Asia, and rising post-pandemic demand for digital services.

Though healthtech, fintech, and supply chain analytics are the big bets in the country, gaming and direct-to-consumer brands are also key sectors to watch. D2C brands have nearly tripled the capital raised from investors in 2021, amounting to over US$2 billion across 105 deals.