HIGHLIGHTS
- Tiki has received an investment of 20 million USD in the Series E from Taiwan’s second largest telecom operator, Taiwan Mobile.
- In this Series E investment round, Tiki received $94 million in August this year.
- Tiki chose to IPO in Singapore because of the country’s favorable and supportive policies.
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Who put their trust in Tiki?
According to Taipei Times, the technology unicorn, Tiki, has received an investment of 20 million USD in the Series E from Taiwan’s second largest telecom operator, Taiwan Mobile. Therefore, Taiwan Mobile will hold 2.7% shares of Tiki Global. This is Taiwan Mobile’s first foray into Vietnam which is expected to pave the way for its expansion into Southeast Asia.
Jamie Lin, the president of Taiwan Mobile, said that cooperating with Tiki will help its subsidiary, Momo.com, have the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the Vietnamese and Southeast Asia market, as well. Besides, this company is also in the process of finding many other strategic partners in Southeast Asia with the goal of developing and trading 5G network systems.
Accorđing to DealStreetAsia, with the investment of Taiwan Mobile, Tiki is valued at 740 million USD. In this Series E investment round, Tiki received $94 million in August this year. Besides, before the investment received from Taiwan Mobile, Tiki received a total of 190.7 million USD from other investors.
The last public funding round that Tiki made was in June 2020. At that time, Tiki received $130 million in a Series D funding round led by Northstar Group.
Currently, VNG Corp is the largest shareholder of Tiki, holding 24% of the shares. In addition to VNG Corp, Tiki also mobilized capital from many large foreign investors, accounting for 49.7% of the capital. Some notable shareholders such as JD.Com International (22.2%), Ubiquitous Traders (8.82%), Finup Asia Investment (4.52%), Sumitomo (3.85%), Sparklabs Ventures Ignition ( 1.48%), STIC SME Global Expansion (1.74%), KIP Venture (0.69%)…
Tiki chose to IPO in Singapore
It is known that, in preparation for this IPO plan, Tiki (Tiki Joint Stock Company) transferred 90.5% of shares to Tiki Global Pte.Ltd, to establish a business entity in Singapore. Like many other unicorns, Tiki chose to IPO in Singapore because of the country’s favorable and supportive policies. It is known that when Tiki is headquartered in Singapore, according to the law of this country, Tiki will be supported by the Singapore Government to pay up to 50% of the salary for employees.
Meanwhile, according to the current securities listing regulations in Vietnam, a company that wants to be listed on the stock exchange needs to meet many conditions, including profitable business results in the last 3 years. With this condition alone, Tiki has “no door” to IPO.
When the IPO plan is successful, Tiki will have a powerful support in the battle “burning money”, along with other competitors like Shopee or Lazada. In the past, Tiki was the underdog in the battle because it didn’t have much capital backing, while Shopee and Lazada both had support from their overseas parent companies.
Huyen Tran
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