HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, July 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On 2 July 2020, at The MOONLAB Co-working space, the four-month journey of the VIISA Acceleration Program Batch 7 reached the signature "Investment Day" milestone. With the aim of showcasing graduating startups to investors all over the world despite the COVID-19 situation, for the first time, VIISA organized the Investment Day in a hybrid manner. The Investment Day welcomed more than 100 active investors, corporations, and startup community builders to both the on-site location, as well as to an exclusive virtual event via a conference call.
In the welcome note, Mr Hieu Vo, VIISA's Board Member and Program Director, re-emphasized much need of technology evolvment in the context of the pandemic has turned the entire world upside down with lots of business giants being failed. Startups strive everyday to give the answer and solution to economy entities to ride through hardship and thrive in new normal period. 6 startups pitched at VIISA's Investment Day includes: iSpeaking, VDES, TripHunter, Ask Locals, Medigo and Gring with focus on education, technology solution, travel, medical and employee training respectively.
For the main part of the event, Ask Locals, Medigo and Gring, three startups from the VIISA Acceleration Program Batch 7, took the stage. Despite the circumstances created by COVID-19, VIISA and the founders still managed to follow the agenda set out at the beginning of the batch. Batch 7 startups have gone through seven intensive online business management training sessions, 80 hours of working with the mentors, entrepreneurs-in-residence and VIISA's executive team. Prior to the Investment Day, the companies were also given the chance to trial pitch their business to reputable investors to gain valuable feedback from 11 investors in 1-on-1 sessions. Finally, as always, they enjoyed VIISA partners' world-class services such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Payoo, MOONLAB Co-working space, etc. The promising startups will have a chance to get follow-on funding of up to US$200,000 from the VIISA Investment Track if they manage to secure a new round of funding from other investors.
"I believe that VIISA has helped us a lot in terms of building a clear and sustainable business and financial model. The VIISA team has also brought us so many opportunities from their network of partners. Another necessary thing is that VIISA has shown us the importance of choosing what to focus on to make the business grow faster with our limited resources. And this is important for us to know the right direction to go and to put our effort in during this time," said Le Huu Ha, founder of Medigo.
Mr. Duc Tran, Board Member and CEO of VIISA, delivered the closing speech of the Investment Day 7 and also called for startups to apply to Accelerator Program Batch 8 at VIISA at the website www.viisa.vn/apply-batch-8.
About VIISA:
Established in January 2017 by FPT Ventures and Dragon Capital, VIISA is an acceleration program and seed-stage fund that invests to build global-ready startups from Vietnam. After six batches, there have been 32 graduates, with some highlighted names such as UrBox, WisePass, VDes, BoxShop, EcomEasy, and TripHunter, which have created more than 400 jobs and raised a total committed US$5 million from other investors.
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