Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures is at it again after it revealed that it has invested money in yet another food-related online startup in Southeast Asia, Vietnam-based online food guide Foody.
The deal for three-month old Foody, financial details of which have not been disclosed, comes less than a month after the VC firm invested in iCook.tw, a Taiwanese food-themed social network.
CyberAgent says that the OpenTable-like service — which is available in English and Vietnamese at foody.vn and has an iPhone app — already includes more than 10,000 restaurants across the country’s major cities and in excess of 5,000 user reviews. The new cash will be used to extend that collection of content and offers, while also growing the service’s user base.
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We’ve seen a couple of food and entertainment startups get snapped up and launch in Southeast Asia this year. Singtel gobbled up HungryGoWhere for $9.4 million, food delivery service Dealguru bought Asia Room Service and Rocket Internet launched Food Panda in the region, however no service yet extends to Vietnam.
“As there is a void for this type of media in Vietnam and successful business models have been executed off by existing gourmet searching and user-review media in Japan and China, CyberAgent Ventures believes that Foody has strong potential to become the leading media in such kind of content in Vietnam,” the VC firm said in a statement.
The deal is yet another to come from CyberAgent’s Southeast Asia-focused ‘A Asia Internet Fund I’, part of which saw the Japanese company launch a local presence in Vietnam.
Other local investments have included NCT Corporation, the media company that is behind Vietnamese music service NhacCuaTui, and local Facebook rival Nivi.vn, the latter of which we wrote about in July.
Headline image via tongdang / Shutterstock
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