BOOM! Foody, Vietnam’s Yelp, gets series C investment one month after series B

Last month, we announced that Foody, Vietnam’s Yelp, got a series B round lead by Garena. Believe it or not, the month isn’t even over yet, and it’s announcing its series C investment lead by Tiger Global Management.

This newest funding round underlines Foody’s keen interest in expanding across the entire region. The Garena investment was earmarked for Vietnam’s local market to expand its categories beyond just restaurant reviews and into food delivery, table booking, and categories beyond just restaurants into beauty and healthcare.

The newest Tiger Global investment will go into Foody’s new Indonesian website, Foody.id, and the launch of its POS system, onePOS. The POS system, according to Foody’s press release is “a restaurant cloud management system for the small and medium business to help increase productivity”.

It is not clear why the series C, and Foody’s fourth round, comes so soon after its series B announcement earlier this month. When Tech In Asia asked Dzung Nguyen, CyberAgent Ventures’ head of Vietnam and Thailand, why the new investment came so soon after the series B, he stated: “go fast or go home”. Is it possible that Foody is keen on taking the entire Southeast Asian market by storm? If so, we’ll likely be expecting further investment rounds as it seeks to conquer the rest of Southeast Asia’s larger markets like Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Given Foody’s current strengths in content and heavy investment into new product categories, the startup is clearly seeking to become the go-to place for Southeast Asian customers and businesses when they think of food.