VNG Reports 17% Revenue Growth In 2025
Vietnam’s first tech unicorn VNG reported net revenue of approximately VND 10,894 billion, equivalent to 414 million dollars, in fiscal year 2025, marking a 17,5% year on year increase. Around 22% of total revenue came from international markets, reflecting the company’s expanding global footprint alongside its domestic growth.
Profitability improved significantly over the same period, with adjusted operating profit surging 183% year on year to VND 856 billion. Operating margins expanded from 3% to 8%, supported by stronger monetisation across key business segments and more disciplined cost management. This shift underscores a clearer focus on profitable growth as VNG scales its operations.
Gaming continued to serve as the company’s core revenue driver, with notable improvements in user monetisation. The paying user ratio increased to 4.6% from 3.7%, indicating stronger conversion rates and deeper user engagement within its gaming ecosystem.
At the same time, VNG’s broader ecosystem is contributing increasingly to growth. Its messaging platform Zalo recorded a 38% increase in revenue, driven by subscriptions and value added services, highlighting the company’s ability to diversify beyond its traditional gaming base.
In fintech, ZaloPay maintained strong momentum, with total payment volume rising 76%, monthly active users growing 40%, and revenue increasing 47%. Revenue from financial services surged 413% across multiple product offerings, reinforcing the platform’s role as a key growth engine within VNG’s integrated ecosystem.
The company’s cloud business, operated under GreenNode, also emerged as a high growth pillar, with revenue increasing 57% year on year. Expansion in enterprise customers and a net revenue retention rate of 123% point to strong demand and customer stickiness in this segment.
Underlying these results is VNG’s broader strategy of leveraging artificial intelligence and ecosystem integration across payments, cloud, and communication platforms. By improving monetisation across multiple verticals while maintaining operational discipline, the company is building a more balanced and sustainable growth model that supports long term scaling in both domestic and international markets.
F88 Targets 2026 IPO
Vietnam-based consumer finance firm F88 is preparing for an IPO in 2026, with plans to sell approximately 10% of its shares as it transitions from the UPCoM market to a mainboard listing. The move reflects a more structured, step-by-step approach to public market entry, as the company seeks to align with listing standards while building investor confidence ahead of a full-scale debut.
The IPO is expected to raise around 18.6 million dollars under a base scenario, with potential upside reaching up to 76 million dollars depending on market conditions and valuation. This flexible fundraising strategy underscores F88’s effort to balance capital raising with market timing, while gradually positioning itself for a larger valuation milestone.
As part of its long-term roadmap, F88 aims to list on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange by the end of 2026, with ambitions of achieving a 1 billion dollar valuation. The transition from UPCoM to HOSE signals a shift toward greater transparency, governance standards, and broader investor access, in line with the company’s growth-stage evolution.
F88’s capital strategy has been supported by a mix of equity and debt financing. The company has attracted investment from Mekong Capital, Granite Oak, and Vietnam Oman Investment Company, while also leveraging bonds and other debt instruments. This diversified approach reflects a deliberate effort to optimize capital structure as the business scales.
Operationally, F88 has demonstrated strong expansion, growing its network to 949 stores while continuing to scale its loan book and revenue. This growth highlights sustained demand within Vietnam’s alternative lending market, where access to traditional financial services remains limited for a large segment of consumers.
The company operates in a relatively underpenetrated segment compared to regional peers, suggesting significant room for further expansion. Against this backdrop, F88’s IPO plan illustrates how growth-stage companies in Vietnam are increasingly adopting phased listing strategies, using intermediate markets as a stepping stone toward full public listings and long-term capital market integration.
Foreign Investors Shift To Core Asset Deals As Vietnam’s M&A Market Matures
Vietnam’s M&A market is entering a more sophisticated phase, with foreign investors increasingly focusing on acquiring core business units or strategic assets rather than pursuing full-company buyouts. This shift reflects a more disciplined investment approach, as dealmaking becomes more selective and aligned with long-term value creation.
Transaction structuring is also becoming a central consideration, with deal design now carrying as much importance as deal size. Carve-outs and partial divestments are gaining traction, allowing companies to optimize their portfolios while enabling investors to target specific high-quality segments. This evolution highlights a transition toward more strategic and institutionalized dealmaking practices in the market.
A notable example of this trend is PAN Group’s approximately 70 million dollar divestment of Bibica to Indonesia’s Momogi Group. The transaction underscores how focused asset-level deals are increasingly being used to unlock value, rather than relying on traditional full acquisitions.
Foreign investors are showing a clear preference for profitable, scalable, and well-positioned assets, signaling a shift toward more disciplined capital deployment. Instead of broad exposure, investors are prioritizing segments that offer stronger fundamentals and clearer paths to growth, reinforcing the market’s move toward value-driven transactions.
This trend is further supported by the continued activity of private equity firms and strategic buyers, who are seeking operational control or meaningful stakes in key business segments. Their approach reflects a broader market dynamic in which targeted investments provide greater flexibility and strategic alignment than full takeovers.
Overall, these developments point to a maturing M&A landscape in Vietnam, where the focus is shifting from opportunistic dealmaking to targeted acquisitions of high-quality assets. The increasing emphasis on value, control, and strategic fit signals a transition toward more structured and institutional behavior across the market.
Vietnamese Banks Accelerate VIFC Entry Plans Through Dedicated Subsidiaries
Vietnamese banks are ramping up efforts to establish dedicated subsidiaries within the Vietnam International Financial Centre, signaling strong industry commitment to the emerging financial hub. This move reflects a broader strategic push to leverage the VIFC as a platform for international expansion and deeper integration into global financial markets.
Several banks view these subsidiaries as key growth vehicles. Institutions such as Nam A Bank are planning wholly owned entities to expand overseas operations, access global capital pools, and diversify cross-border financial services. This approach highlights how banks are using the VIFC structure to strengthen their international positioning while building more scalable business models.
Large state-backed and leading commercial banks are also joining the push. Vietcombank and VietinBank are exploring similar subsidiary structures as part of their efforts to scale operations and align more closely with international standards in governance and risk management. Their participation underscores the sector-wide shift toward more structured and globally oriented growth strategies.
Beyond traditional banking, some institutions are looking to integrate fintech capabilities within their VIFC entities. Plans include the development of digital payments and, potentially, digital asset services, leveraging partnerships and evolving regulatory frameworks. This reflects a growing ambition to position VIFC subsidiaries not only as financial intermediaries but also as innovation platforms within the digital finance ecosystem.
The initiative is attracting broad participation across the banking sector. Founding and participating members include MB, TPBank, SHB, HDBank, and Nam A Bank, alongside rising interest from foreign institutions. This ecosystem-level engagement indicates that the VIFC is emerging as a central node for both domestic and international financial players.
Driving this momentum are the policy advantages offered by the VIFC, including preferential regulatory conditions, tax incentives, and greater operational flexibility. These benefits make the platform particularly attractive for banks seeking to enhance competitiveness, optimize capital deployment, and scale internationally through a more structured and globally aligned framework.
Escaping the “Illusion of Growth”: Why Startups Must Rethink What Growth Really Means
The “illusion of growth” has emerged as a common trap for startups, particularly in environments where paid acquisition can quickly inflate performance metrics. A key warning sign is when growth disappears as soon as advertising is turned off, indicating that the business is relying on paid channels rather than a sustainable growth engine. This distinction highlights the need for startups to move beyond surface-level expansion and focus on building underlying drivers of long-term growth.
Early traction can often be misleading. Strong initial performance, whether driven by a successful campaign or access to low-cost acquisition channels, does not necessarily indicate that a business model is scalable or repeatable. As a result, startups that interpret early success as validation may misjudge their true growth potential.
This misinterpretation can lead to a more dangerous outcome, where founders scale based on the wrong signals. By overgeneralizing early wins, companies may pursue aggressive expansion strategies built on flawed assumptions, increasing operational risk as they grow. In such cases, growth is not only unsustainable but may also expose deeper weaknesses in the business model.
In some instances, accelerating growth can even worsen a company’s fundamentals. Rapid expansion may lead to rising customer acquisition costs, declining user retention, and tightening cash flow, ultimately weakening unit economics. These dynamics underscore that not all growth is inherently positive, particularly when it is not supported by strong underlying performance.
Sustainable growth, therefore, should be understood as a system rather than a collection of tactics. It requires a foundation built on product strength, user retention, and the ability to generate repeatable results over time. Within this system, retention plays a critical role. If users do not return or refer others, there is no true growth engine, and acquisition alone cannot sustain long-term expansion.
This perspective, originally shared at the Genesia Orbit Workshop in March 2026 and later distilled on zunzunstartups.com, reflects a broader shift in startup thinking. As funding environments become more disciplined, founders are increasingly moving away from vanity metrics and toward building repeatable, data-driven growth systems that can support durable and scalable businesses.
Genesia Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm operating in Japan and Southeast Asia, with a strong belief in the long-term potential of Vietnam’s digital economy. Beyond providing capital, the fund actively supports startups through strategic guidance and connections to a broader regional network.