Vietnam is all set to welcome another homegrown social network platform called Lotus, developed by media group VCCorp, which is aiming to raise as much as 1.2-trillion-dong ($51.6 million).

Lotus has secured an initial investment of 700 billion dong from local conglomerates and individuals, and plans to raise another 500 billion dong, according to a statement.
It was earlier said that VCCorp was developing a social network named VivaVietnam to take on the dominating presence of Facebook locally. It was also rumoured that Vietnam’s largest private business Vingroup has invested in VivaVietnam.

VCCorp has ultimately chosen Lotus as the brand name for this latest social app, which is expected to make a soft launch next month.

The company claims Lotus was built by its in-house engineering team that worked on its mobile app, AI, big data and cloud computing fields.
It also acknowledges that social network is a “fierce market”. Vietnam had 65 million social network accounts, a 30 per cent rise from 2018, according to local media reports that cited Communications and Information Minister Nguyen Manh Hung last week. Meanwhile, according to Statista, Vietnam’s active Facebook users stood at 43.5 million in 2018 that will likely to increase to more than 45 million this year. The country also ranked seventh in terms of the number of Facebook users.

However, the Silicon Valley social app giant recently faced some hurdles in the local market, as the government wanted to hold its grip over content sharing.
Vietnam has requested Facebook to authenticate its users, and indicated that only authenticated users will be allowed to use its live-streaming service.

With the cyber security law in effect earlier this year, social platforms such as Facebook and Google have been put under stricter censor by the government, which bans the delivery of ‘toxic information’ (that include anti-state statements and fake news).

Hung had earlier asserted that he wanted Vietnam to have more local social apps. Gapo, launched a month ago on the back of that encouragement, targets to have 3 million users within this year and expedite the growth to 50 million users by the end of 2021.

However, industry experts are of the view that as long as Facebook is still operating in Vietnam, these new Vietnamese players will have a very hard time ahead.

Source: Deal Street Asia.