Education Startup Will Flourish in Vietnam

  Education startup will become great opportunity for foreign investors to invest in Vietnam as well as the Vietnam startup community.

GotIt!, a Startup, a Mobile App which is built on the question – answer foundation for a long time has been presented in the top 10 educational apps on App Store in the US. GotIt! has received 9 million USD from Capricorn Investment Group. Investors of GotIt! are also the people who invest in companies creating products that have changed the world such as Tesla Motor, SpaceX, and PlanetLabs. They believe that GotIt! will become "the next big thing" when GotIt! provides services in the areas beyond education.

One other education startup which is ELSA - teaching English pronunciation, has just passed 1,200 competitors to win first prize at SXSWedu - a competition in education technology startup, organized in the United States. This application uses artificial intelligence technology to help users improve their English pronunciation.

And yet, a different startup which is Monkey Junior, specializing in foreign language teaching has won the competition “GIST Tech-I 2016” held in the US after passing more than 1,000 competitors from 104 countries in the world. This is the startup contest initiated by the US government and received the backing of Mark Zuckerberg – CEO of Facebook - as well as many powerful individuals in Silicon Valley.

Belongs to the EdTech field, which is attracting the attention of Vietnamese startup community, Monkey Junior application is available on App Store, Google Play and Amazon with a large number of users from the US (accounted for 43%), Vietnam ( 10-20%), Canada, France... Although this app aims to teach foreign languages, the point to make up the difference for Monkey Junior is that the teaching contents are directed at children, especially children under 6 years old.

We have to mention one other EdTech which is Code4Startup. Code4Startup is the online training website. Although training on programming is not new, the basic difference of Code4Startup is that it is not theoretical teaching, Code4Startup goes straight into practice by guiding learners to build real applications. Hence, Code4Startup has successfully calling for capital on KickStarter.

The common point of this 4 startups is that the project have high applicability, developing towards EdTech (educational technology) and "father" of them are all Vietnamese: GotIt! Of Dr Tran Viet Hung; Elsa was founded by Van Dinh Hong Vu Ngo Thuy Ngoc Tu; Monkey Junior of Dao Xuan Hoang and Code4Startup of Leo Trieu (Trieu Quang Anh).

Movement for startup towards EdTech (educational technology) are blooming and the fund as well as foreign investors are increasingly appreciating Edtech in Vietnam.

Every year, Vietnamese spent 3-4 billion USD to send their children to study abroad and the market for online education is very potential on a large scale. Vietnam is a country of more than 22 million pupils and students, is the large customer market that many education companies want to explore. On the other hand, the introduction of this community-based projects to apply in reality is very consistent with preference and development trend of modern education, easy to be welcomed by parents and students in Vietnam.

In addition to the potential of the market, international investors believe that the Vietnam startups in general and EdTech startups in particular have been contributed actively to the social advancement, improve community knowledge and update the world’s new trends in Vietnam; while also contributing to the economic development of the country. Similarly, in the world, such EdTech startups as the Knewton, Coursera, Udemy, Duolingo... are the clear proof of this.

The million dollars online training market has been receiving special attention of foreign investors. By the end of 2016, Vietnam had 309 investment projects in the fields of education and training with total registered capital of over 767 million USD.

Apax English is an example. Recently, ChungDahm Learning Education Corporation (Korea) and Egroup Education JSC have signed a memorandum of cooperation for an additional investment of of 10 million USD for English training in Vietnam. Earlier, ChungDahm Learning and Egroup have brought the Asian’s leading children English program to Vietnam with the brand “Apax”.

From the success of Apax English, many cooperation and investment projects in education are increasingly powerful. Next, there will be the project of SK Telecom (under the SK Group, one of the 3 largest Korean group), bringing the school of programming using intelligent robot to Vietnam. It will become the first cooperation in the education sector with Egroup.

With the above positive signals, hopefully that in the coming time, Vietnam education market will continue to receive "new wind" from the funds and foreign investors.

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