VN’s internet company valued at US$1 billion

VietNamNet Bridge – Total turnover of Vietnam’s internet economy’s is scheduled to soar to VND100 trillion by 2018 from the VND20.4 trillion in 2013.

VNG appears to be the first Vietnamese internet company valued at one billion US dollars.

A recent survey by World Startup Report on the world’s internet companies showed that Vietnam ranks 30th among 50 surveyed countries in terms of business scale.

Of the three big internet firms, VNG was valued at one billion dollars. The other two are VC Corp, valued at $125 million, while Vat Gia Viet Nam JSC, which runs vatgia.com website, is valued at $75 million.

The Vietnamese companies have obtained high value just after eight to 10 years of operation.

Le Hong Minh, CEO of VNG, commented that internet service has been one of the fastest growing industries over the last 10 years.

In 2004, the total revenue from internet-based services was modest at VND70 billion. Meanwhile, the figure jumped to VND2.6 trillion by 2009 and to VND20.4 trillion by 2013, which came from online games, e-commerce, internet content services and online ads.

Also according to Minh, the turnover from online ads soared from VND20 billion in 2004 to VND300 billion in 2009 and then to VND2.2 trillion in 2013, the year when the online ad revenue for the first time was higher than the revenue from print paper ads.

VNG predicted that the total turnover of the internet-based content services would reach VND100 trillion by 2018. The online ad turnover is believed to increase by four times by 2018 in comparison with 2013 to VND8 trillion, while the turnover from online games by two folds to VND12 trillion.

Vietnam is believed to witness an e-commerce boom by 2018 with turnover reaching VND60 trillion, while content services on mobile devices may increase from VND8 trillion 2013 to VND20 trillion.

In 2013, VNG reportedly got the revenue of VND2.1 trillion, while it strives to earn VND2.365 trillion in 2014.

According to the internet company, about 30-50 million customers use the company’s services a day. Zalo, an app that allows to send messages and make calls free of charge, has attracted 11-12 million users.

VNG also has Zing MP3, an app for listening to music; news.zing.vn, an electronic information portal; Zing Me, a social network; and Zing Chat, an app for online chatting and many online games.

VNG, which is now valued at $1 billion and employs 2,000 workers, was founded in 2004 by five men with a passion for games who wanted to develop a leading online game company.

VC Corp, according to the corporation’s CEO Vuong Vu Thang, has the data processing scale equivalent to that of Yahoo with 30 billion ad views per month.

VC Corp has created 40 products in many different fields. E-commerce is a great advantage of VC Corp, with a series of websites, including Rongbay.com, Enbac.com, Muare.vn, Muachung.vn, and Solo.vn, which have over 10 million customers and trading volume accounting for 30 percent of the market’s total transaction value.

Meanwhile, Vat Gia JSC has been focusing on developing e-commerce. Vatgia.com, an online shopping web, reportedly has trading value of VND3 trillion a year, with one million members.

Source : http://english.vietnamnet.vn/