Coc Coc reveals its plan of launching a mobile browser version, and invest in sales and customer services this year with investment from German firm Hubert Burda Media. — Photo zing.vn

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Co-founder of Vietnamese company Coc Coc Le Van Thanh revealed the firm's plan for utilising the US$14 million invested by German media firm Hubert Burda Media.

This was the first time that he disclosed the amount of the investment.

Thanh said that besides improving the quality of its products, Coc Coc will carry out activities to penetrate international markets this year, and will launch its mobile browser version. He added that the company will also invest in sales and customer services.

Thanh pointed out that it took time to do market research. However, he did not reveal the time frame of the firm for entering foreign markets. In Viet Nam, Coc Coc developed its products for nearly three years before launching them. Therefore, the company needs to start now if it is targeting overseas markets, he added.

Peter Kennedy, executive chairman of Hubert Burda Media in Asia, said that the amount of $14 million will be transferred to Coc Coc within 18 months.

Of the amount, $10 million came from the German firm and $4 million was from other investors, including high-level managers of the company.

On being asked why his firm is investing in Coc Coc, Kennedy said that it was impressed by the growth of Coc Coc customers and the quality of its products. He added that the level of developers of the Viet Nam-based company was relatively the same as the best developers in the world today.

He expressed the belief that if it is successful in Viet Nam, Coc Coc can succeed in other countries, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

Coc Coc was founded by three Vietnamese developers and Victor Lavrenko, the present CEO, in 2012. Headquartered in Ha Noi, it has launched products such as the Coc Coc search engine, Coc Coc browser, Coc Coc advertising platform and a geo-location application called Nha Nha.

By the end of 2014, the statistics of web traffic analysis tool StatCounter showed that Coc Coc beat Firefox and Internet Explorer to be the second-most popular browser in Viet Nam, only behind Google Chrome. It has had more than 44 million downloads since then. — VNS