21/8/2018 – Uiza, a provider of video and livestream cloud API platform based in Vietnam has secured an undisclosed pre-seed funding from homegrown venture capital firm ESP Capital and Japanese IT Corporation Framgia Inc.
The investment capital secured will be used to recruit more engineers to improve its core video technology, and build an industry as big as Alibaba or Tencent.
Founded by Nguyen Duc Anh, a Troy University graduate and former Senior Director of Topica Educational Technology, Uiza claims to be the first startup in Southeast Asia to provide a video and livestream cloud API platform.
But aside from being a livestreaming platform for audiences, Uiza also uses data science to optimize the viewing experience. This is done by collecting billions of data hubs in real-time through connections between thousands of ISPs, billions of video views, and hundreds of transmission locations.
Uiza then applies these data to artificial intelligence and machine technology to optimize the viewing experience as well as livestream in the best way for audiences.
According to Uiza’s CEO Kevin Ng, internet video and livestreaming are one of the fastest growing markets, especially in Asia, which sees more than 30 percent year-on-year.
He believes that video and livestream will be a huge playground for technology and great potential for long-term growth.
“There are many companies in Vietnam as well as Asia in the consumer and B2C sectors, but we are currently quite lacking of tech enablers. Uiza has a huge potential in the Internet Video market, with an estimated value of nearly US$70 billion over the next five years,” he said.
Uiza is also currently working on its Series A round which is targeted to close later in November or December. Fundings from the Series A will be used to fuel the expenses of its growth plans in major markets such as Singapore and Japan.
Commenting on the investment, General Partner of ESP Capital Vy Le said, “They are quite a good fit with ESP Capital. We want to support and develop startups that have potential to grow into a unicorn, which is why ESP chose to invest in Uiza.”
Headquartered in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City, ESP Capital Fund is investing in startups in the seed technology sector. The investment firm targets potential startups in hopes of building the first unicorn in the country.
So far, ESP Capital Fund has backed 9 startups to date using about US$1.4 million from its US$20 million funds which debuted last year.
Uiza is the ninth recipient of ESP’s investment after Canavi, Jamja, Homedy, Luxstay, Cooky, WeFit and two other companies in the field of Medtech.
On the other hand, Framgia Inc which is established in 2012, specializes in designing and developing applications, games, social networking platform, among others.
“Framgia Inc is both an investor and one of the first customers to use Uiza,” said Taihei Kobayashi, the CEO of Framgia Inc. “They have helped us save dozens of developers and months for developing a similar platform. With our strengths and experience in technology, Framgia believes we can support Uiza in expanding to the Asian market.”
Moving forward, Uiza aims to expand its customers livestream videos to reach over 2 billion global viewers over the next five years.
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