Singapore’s TNB Aura says expected third fund will focus on Vietnam

Singapore-based venture capital firm TNB Aura (TNBA) says it is in talks to raise capital for its third fund, to be focused on Vietnam as a core market.

TNB Aura is looking to double down on investments in Vietnam in the next few years, the venture capital firm wrote in a statement on its website seen on Monday. The announcement is the text from an earlier interview TNB Aura’s founding partner Vicknesh Pillay gave to Japan’s news platform Deal Street Asia.

“Through applying some of the research and learning from our investments in Indonesia and other more mature markets, we foresee TNBA making a lot more investments in Vietnam,” Pillay said.

“TNBA expects to make another 5-7 investments into Vietnam over the next 18 months,” he said.

“In our view, many tech trends are yet to emerge from Vietnam which we foresee to be an exciting country for investments over the next few years.”

The firm has made eight investments in total in Vietnam over the past three years. Typically, TNBA allocates 20-40% of its fund corpus towards Vietnam. The company did not disclose the targeted size of the third fund.

In a release on July 31, TNBA said Vuihoc, an edtech platform serving K-12 Vietnamese students, has secured a $6 million investment in a Series A funding round led by the Singaporean VC firm. Prior to that, it joined the $17.1-million Series A funding round in Vietnamese earned wage access startup GIMO. Earlier, the firm led a $6-million funding round for edtech startup Vuihoc.

“In our view, many tech trends are yet to emerge from Vietnam which we foresee to be an exciting country for investments over the next few years,” Pillay told Deal Street Asia.

“With the current edtech landscape concentrated around English language and training players, we believe that the K-12 segment targeting subjects covered under the national curriculum presents a huge opportunity for growth.

“Offline centers, though widespread, are fragmented and do not provide affordable access to students in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, therefore signaling a gap in the market of over 17 million students. In addition, we have also seen a growing willingness to pay from Vietnamese parents given that they spend an average of over 35% of their disposable income on education.”

TNB Aura has established a Scout initiative to tap into early-stage opportunities in Vietnam. Last year, TNB Aura Vietnam Scout partnered with Hanoi-headquartered VC firm ThinkZone Ventures to launch the Global Minds Accelerator program to co-invest, mentor, and support Vietnamese tech startups.

TNBA is optimistic about Vietnam’s future growth, he said, adding that his firm has been running its Scout initiatives to identify high-quality founders and invest in business models that it is familiar with at earlier stages, allowing TNBA to get a “foot in the door” and lead the funding rounds of these opportunities at the right stage.

In terms of competition in the Vietnamese market, he said TNBA collaborates closely with local seed funds and industry experts for deal flow and focuses on where it can value add more significantly, which is in the Series A stage.

“We assist portfolio companies with governance and practices such as the right due diligence, business plan formulation and milestone setting. In addition, through our research-based and outbound approach, TNBA connects with founders long before they raise funds, thereby facilitating the opportunity to lead subsequent rounds upon identifying these leading founders and companies early.”