And then the first Vietnamese "tech unicorn" appeared, VNG, in 2014, when this 10-year-old brand (at that time) met a series of strict criteria. From there, the symbol of success called VNG spread widely.
VNG's journey to becoming a "technology unicorn" began with a PC gaming cafe. Around 2004, when VinaGame Company was just a month old, with a capital of only 60,000 USD, founder Le Hong Minh and 4 young colleagues dared to sign a contract worth 160,000 USD with a foreign partner to bring the game Vo Lam Truyen Ky to Vietnam. Thanks to skillful negotiations, a deposit of 50,000 USD was accepted (meaning at that time VinaGame only had 10,000 USD left in its bank account), that all-in move soon helped VinaGame achieve great success with this game.
That big and exciting turning point opens up a bright journey for VinaGame, so that this purely Vietnamese technology brand can continue to write more miracles with many firsts, many proud mosts.
Founder - CEO Le Hong Minh (standing) during an internal information exchange session at VNG Campus. Photo: PT
In addition to making its mark as the first Vietnamese technology company to release an online game (Vo Lam Truyen Ky, Kingsoft's Sword Heroes Fate series) with a breakthrough success of 300,000 PCUs after only one month, and becoming the first company to successfully negotiate with international partners and distribute copyrighted games in Vietnam in 2005, two years later (2007), VinaGame inaugurated the most modern data center in Vietnam (VINADATA, later renamed VNG Cloud). In 2010, realizing that the company's fields had "blossomed", CEO Le Hong Minh changed the name of VinaGame to VNG and launched (open beta) the historical game Thuan Thien Kiem, the first Vietnamese-branded MMO game in Southeast Asia. VNG's shock must be said to be the event in 2012: Announcing the launch of Zalo - a free messaging and calling application operating on the mobile platform.
Along with a series of other successful decisions, in 2014, VNG was valued at 1 billion USD by World Start-up Report, becoming the first unicorn in Vietnam.
It took only 10 years to become a unicorn, which is not easy for the Vietnamese technology business community. By 2023, Vietnam only had 4 unicorns (VNG, VNLIFE, Sky Mavis and MoMo), which is enough to understand how great VNG's efforts and stature are. And a decade later since 2014 is the time when VNG's unicorn steps have flourished with many resounding successes domestically and internationally.
During this time, VNG boldly opened offices/studios in many regions around the world, continuously launching "blockbuster" games with the goal of upgrading the player experience in Vietnam to be on par with other regions in the world. The total number of downloads of game products of MPS studio (under VNG) from 2019 to present has been more than 261 million, successfully releasing 41 game titles in the global market. VNG also invested in self-producing mobile games to release to the international market. Notably, in 2018, the mobile eSports game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang released by VNG became the first game of the 6 eSports selected to compete at the 2019 SEA Games in the Philippines.
The strong impression is the development of the Zalo ecosystem. After Zalo, in 2015, ZaloPay e-wallet was born. In addition, Zalo's first virtual assistant named Kiki was also born in 2020. To date, Zalo has more than 75 million regular users, more than 10,000 state agencies use Zalo to connect with people, becoming the most popular messaging application in Vietnam. "National e-wallet" ZaloPay in 2023 recorded a growth milestone of more than 14 million regular users. Regarding the Kiki voice assistant in cars, it has reached 500,000 installations to date. Notably, the company managing ZaloPay e-wallet is the only Vietnamese representative in the top 200 global fintech companies ranking announced by CNBC...
VNG does not hide its ambition to become the leading unit in digital transformation services. Realizing that ambition is certainly not difficult, when looking at the impressive 20-year track record of the Vietnamese "technology unicorn" with nearly 4,000 employees working on this!
In 2023, VNG will be on the list of "Top 5 large enterprises with the best working environment"
"Best" in Vietnam, ranked by the Global Authority on Workplace Culture (Great Place To Work® - GPTW).
Source: https://nld.com.vn/chuyen-ve-mot-ky-lan-cong-nghe-viet-196240205135951908.htm
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