Vietnam startup FoodMap raises $1 mln to expand in foreign markets

Ho Chi Minh City-based agriculture-technology startup FoodMap has raised $1 million in a move to bring Vietnamese farm produce to new international markets, the agritech firm said on Wednesday.

With the new investments, FoodMap will focus on exporting goods to New Zealand and China, CEO Tung Pham told The Investor.

The funding features existing investors Vulpes Investment Management, Beenext, Wavemaker Partners, and a new investor from Singapore. With the latest move, FoodMap’s total funding went up to $4.5 million. In 2022, FoodMap raised an oversubscribed pre-Series A round of $3 million, co-led by Vulpes Ventures and Beenext. In 2020, it raised $500,000 in seed funds from Wavemaker Partners.

Established in 2020, FoodMap connects farmers, small- and medium-sized agricultural businesses, and consumers, with a focus on transparency and traceability for its products. It also operates an agritech e-commerce platform to connect businesses (B2B) and customers (B2C).

Farm produce is an export staple for Vietnam. The country earned $2.7 billion from these exports in the first half of this year, up 63% year-on-year, according to the Vietnam Fruit Association. The target of exporting $4 billion worth of farm produce this year is feasible, the association highlighted.

Agritech startups in Vietnam have been attracting investors. In April, Tepbac received $2.25 million in a pre-series A funding round led by Dutch aquaculture investor Aqua-Spark. The investment will help the shrimp technologist digitize and scale up its Vietnamese shrimp farm production. AgFunder, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital (VC) firm focusing on foodtech and agtech, and Son-Tech Investment, a $50 million Vietnam-focused VC company, also participated in the round.

In February, VinaCapital Group’s technology investment arm VinaCapital Ventures invested $1 million in Koina, a Vietnam-based data-driven farm-to-business agriculture technology platform, as part of a seed extension fundraising round.

“With the new investment, Koina will expand to more sales channels creating more volume to offtake from farms. We are also investing more in technologies to better manage quality and increase added value for Vietnam’s agriculture products,” said Nguyen Tran Thi, co-founder and chairman of Koina.

In December 2022, Oda, a Vietnamese startup providing food procurement systems for restaurants and suppliers, secured $1 million in seed round funding from Touchstone Partners. Oda will use the proceeds to further develop its core software technology, refine the app’s user interface, and improve big data analytics capabilities to better predict market trends and ingredient quantities, the Ho Chi Minh City-based firm said.