CNV, a Vietnamese startup that provides SaaS and marketing services to MSMEs and SMEs, has announced plans to expand to the Philippines this year.
This comes as the startup secured $1 million in its Seed funding round led by Singapore-based venture capital investor Wavemaker Partners. The round also took place three years after CNV secured pre-seed funding from SME payments and services firm NextPay.
The plan to expand to the Philippines is a strategic move as CNV targets micro and small businesses seeking to transform their businesses digitally to reach more customers.
According to the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry, out of the 1.11 million total businesses in the country, 99.6% or about 1.1 million are MSMEs.
Collectively, these MSMEs generated a total of 5,607,748 jobs, or 65.10% of the country’s total employment.
CNV was founded in 2020 by Nguyen Tuan Phu and Do Dang Khoa. It provides cloud-based business and marketing solutions to MSMEs, SMEs, and enterprises in Vietnam.
The startup currently serves over 2,0000 customers, including multinational corporations, local enterprises, SMEs, MSMEs, and government agencies, helping them optimize their client-facing activities and backend customer data platform analysis activities.
It also claims to have witnessed a 250% growth in revenue and number of customers acquired.
“In the midst of a global funding winter, we are grateful for our existing and new investors’ relentless support to achieve this funding milestone. Our next big steps include fostering collaboration to design exclusive financial products for every customer segment, as well as gearing up for expansion to the Philippines in 2024,” said CNV CEO Phu Nguyen.
The lead investor in this round, Wavemaker Partners, raised $24.5 million so far from US investors for its fifth Southeast Asia-focused fund. The fund, Wavemaker Pacific 5, seeks to invest in the fast-growing technology industry in the region.
In the Philippines, Wavemaker Partners’s portfolio includes HR tech startup Sprout Solutions, fintech major Coins.ph, on-demand shipping platform Shipmates, online marketplace Growsari, and healthtech startup Maria Health, among others.
“Wavemaker Partners is proud to support CNV in its next phase of growth to help hundreds of thousands of businesses in Vietnam drive meaningful results with their sales and customer engagement using CNV’s comprehensive CDP and loyalty SaaS products,” said Phuong Tran, Principal at Wavemaker Partners.