31/10/2018 – Vietnamese food recipe portal Cooky said that it has closed a US$500K funding round led by existing backer ESP Capital. Local venture firm Founders Capital and several undisclosed angel investors also participated in the financing round.
With the funding, Cooky plans to further strengthen its brand name through a series of initiatives, including tutorial sessions, connecting users with celebrities and chefs, as well as increasing online interaction between users.
“The latest investment will be used to enhance our offers, enlarge the user base and expand our operations,” said Vuong Nguyen, the Founder of Cooky.
Since its inception in 2015, the portal had more than 200 offline cooking tutorial sessions and over 40,000 recipes on its online platform which it claims to gain more than 3 million visits per month.
According to Cooky, the platform targets millennials who account for 33 percent of Vietnam’s 100 million population, which were more inclined towards the do-it-yourself and online sharing lifestyles.
Previously, Cooky received its seed financing from Vietnamese homegrown VC firm ESP Capital in 2017.
“The Cooky platform has grown rapidly as our expectation,” said Vy Le, the CEO of ESP Capital. “We decided to invest in the company’s second round to support its growth in the coming time.”
Established in 2017, ESP Capital with its US$20 million fund aims to invest in Vietnamese early-stage startups and opportunities across Southeast Asia.
To date, the venture capital firm has made investments in 10 companies, which consist of 8 Vietnamese startups and 2 startups based in Singapore.
Meanwhile, Founders Capital is domiciled in Singapore and has an office in Hanoi. It has backed six Vietnamese startups including Netlink, Zmedia, Thethao247, Metub Network, Luxstay, and Viralworks.
