Tubudd, a platform to connect international travellers to buddies, announced that it successfully raised capital and received a six-figure investment from TheVentures (South Korea) on Thursday.
During the two years that travel activities were disrupted due to COVID-19, Tubudd focused on technology development and the domestic market by optimising costs and training for buddies. With those efforts, when Viet Nam reopened after COVID-19, Tubudd received a round of seed investment from TheVentures.
In 2022, with the investment from TheVentures, Tubudd decided to rebrand with a new mission and goals based on the core value of a platform to connect international travellers to buddies.
The new version of Tubudd will spend 40 per cent of its resources to create a more transparent and safer connection for international business people coming to Viet Nam to seek investment opportunities or expand the market and Vietnamese business buddies with excellent language and a profession. The remaining resources will continue to be devoted to tourism-related activities.
"Tubudd has always developed based on the capability of the Vietnamese. Therefore, in this new chapter, Tubudd clearly defined our mission to become a community for talented young Vietnamese, helping them to have an environment and opportunities to promote their own ability and take over their own life,” said Annie Vu - CEO Tubudd.
"Coming out of COVID-19, we saw many great signs of tourism coming back and Viet Nam is definitely one of the best destinations to come. Riding with this trend, we expect to expand and develop steadily with the Viet Nam tourism industry. We found that in order to have a better and safer environment for tourism in Viet Nam, we need to do two things with TUBUDD: categorise the local buddies to maintain the expectation of travelers and standardise the local buddies with training programmes to help them be more professional and make more money on our platform. These are two goals that we would do this and next year. We wish to create more professional local buddies as a self-employed position. This is no doubt a very big goal that we would need a lot of help on our way to make Viet Nam tourism more attractive and convenient for travellers," said Annie Vu - CEO Tubudd.
Chris Kim, CEO of The Ventures said: "TheVentrues focus to Southeast Asia market especially in Viet Nam and Vietnamese founder. We see huge potential for tourism and hospitality industry in Viet Nam. It shows that Viet Nam is in top three of South Korean's wish-to-go destination list. We already see the local tourism industry is re-bounding after COVID-19."
Under the event, Tubudd also signed co-operation with investors TheVentures and partners such as community development GapoWork, market development partner Transinex. — VNS