VNG

VNG Corporation (VNG) is a technology company, founded in 2004, specializing in digital content and online entertainment, social networking, and e-commerce. It focuses on four main businesses, including online games, platforms, digital payments and cloud services. Many key products developed by VNG have attracted hundreds of millions of users such as Zalo, ZaloPay, Zing MP3, and 123phim. The company is "Vietnam’s first ever unicorn start-up" according to The ASEAN Post.

VNG is a typical investor entrepreneurship. Its CEO and founder Le Hong Minh is not a programmer. He graduated from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where he studied finance. After returning to Vietnam, Le Hong Minh first worked at PwC, and then joined Vina Capital, a well-known local VC in Vietnam, as managing director. Vuong Quang Khai, co-founder and president of VNG, graduated from the Computer Science Department of Columbia University in New York with a master's degree. He developed Vietnam's search engine hoatieu. He created VNG's most successful Internet products such as Zing MP3 and Zalo.

The first game launched by VNG was the RPG game "Swordsman Love" authorized by China's Kingsoft Software. It achieved success far beyond expectations after its launch and still has a large number of players in Vietnam.

In 2007, VNG founded Vietnam's first music website Zing MP3, which is still the dominant player in Vietnam's online music market.

In 2008, VNG launched ZingPlay, a game distribution platform. In addition to Vietnam, ZingPlay also operates in other Southeast Asian countries and Latin America.

In 2009, VNG launched Zing Me, a social network product. Although Zing Me failed to create any waves and was completely defeated by the outsider Facebook and exited the market, VNG launched Zalo three years later, which achieved great success this time.

In 2017, VNG launched ZaloPay based on Zalo, entering the fintech market.

The rapidly developing VNG began to attract the attention of investors around 2010 and became Vietnam's first unicorn company. VNG’s historical investors have mainly been major Chinese Internet companies and the Singapore Government Investment Corporation GIC.

VNG adopts an AB share structure. Among the two founders, Le Hong Minh holds 8% of the shares and has 45% of the voting rights; Vuong Quang Khai holds 1.1% of the shares and has 6.0% of the voting rights.

In terms of external shareholders, Tencent alone holds 43% of the shares, but only has 23% of the voting rights; GIC holds 10.1% of the shares, with 5.4% of the voting rights; Ant Group holds 5.1% of the shares, with 2.8% voting rights.