500 Startups invests up to $150k each in 9 Vietnamese firms on its Demo Day

Global venture capital firm 500 Startups recently hosted a Demo Day to showcase companies funded by its Vietnam-focused fund.

500 Startups Vietnam’s Demo Day / Source: 500 Startups

Most of the nine startups that were presented at the event graduated from the 10-week Saola Accelerator program. 500 Startups Vietnam invested up to $150,000 in each participating company.

Launched in 2019, the accelerator has hosted three batches, selecting a total of 17 startups that includes a mix of fintech, edtech, and e-commerce businesses.

Over 100 investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders convened at the Demo Day in Ho Chi Minh City. The startups presenting included:

• Bizzi, an intelligent accounts payable automation startup that helps local small and medium-sized enterprises comply with regulation and further digitize their cash flow management
• CoolMate, a digital wardrobe that helps men stock up on daily fashion essentials by allowing users to order up to 10 items like t-shirts and socks for under US$20
• Cricket One, a startup that farms crickets and claims to have the largest production capacity in the world
• PI Exchange, a startup that helps companies build and operate machine learning models without data scientists
• ProSpark, a platform for upskilling and reskilling Southeast Asia’s workforce focused on making corporate training fun and accessible
• Staple, an AI data-capture platform for finance, banking, and healthcare that can handle documents of various formats, layouts, languages, and extract information within seconds
• TradingFoe, a business-to-business marketplace that helps importers and exporters in Southeast Asia and Nordic countries find the right trading partners and gain access to financing and insurance
• Tribee, an employee experience app that helps companies understand, reward, and connect with employees
• Voiz, an audiobook and podcast app that provides a market for quality copyrighted content in Vietnam

“In the past five years, the tech entrepreneurial ecosystem has evolved even faster than we could have even imagined. And yet there’s still a lot of room to run and grow,” said Eddie Thai, general partner of 500 Startups Vietnam.

At the same event, the VC firm introduced its new edtech company, ApplyBoard. The platform aims to help international students get quality higher education in the U.S., the UK, and Canada.

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