Newly-formed homegrown venture capital firm Startup Viet Partners, has made its entrance into the ecosystem with a US$5 million debut fund.

The fund will focus on Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C) sectors, specialising in tech solutions for SMEs and corporations in Viet Nam.

The firm said the B2B model was an emerging trend for many Vietnamese start-ups. More than 90 per cent of enterprises in Viet Nam are small and medium scale, and most of them need to apply technology to improve their performance and management capabilities.

Startup Viet Partners is supported by 10 Limited Partners (LPs), including businessmen and women in Viet Nam who each have an average of 20 years of experience in building and managing large Vietnamese corporations. Their expertise includes retail, manufacturing, FMCG, F&B, publishing, software and consulting.

Vietnamese start-ups often lack operational support. In addition to financial investment, Startup Viet Partners said it helped founders in strategic planning, operation and capital mobilisation for the next phase, said a representative of Startup Viet Partners.

With B2B orientation as the core, the HCM City-headquartered firm will target ticket size of $500-$1 million pre-series A deals to start with, and is looking to invest in two to four start-ups per year.

Last year, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued a decree calling on private and public sectors to embrace the 4th Industrial Revolution by applying technology in production. That was also seen as a call by the country’s tech start-ups to boost their business activities in the B2B and B2B2C sectors, the firm said. — VNS