MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: Sherpa Company Pays $65m for 25% Equity Stake in Trusting Social to Harness Big Data for Consumer Finance in Vietnam

Singapore-based Trusting Social recently closed its Series C funding round, selling 25 percent of its equity for USD 65 million to Sherpa Company, a subsidiary of the Vietnam-based Masan Group, which operates across the financial, food, materials, retail and technology sectors. Trusting Social offers tools using artificial intelligence to generate consumer credit profiles for 170 banks that serve 1 billion people in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Masan Group CEO Danny Le stated that the firms plan to develop Trusting Social’s software “from a pure credit scoring use case to a holistic consumer engine.”

Established in 2013, Trusting Social is a subsidiary of Singapore-based Trust IQ. Neither Trusting Social nor Trust IQ publishes its financial data.

Masan Group was launched in 1996 and reported gross profits of VND 22 trillion (USD 950 million) for 2021, ending that year with total assets of VND 126 trillion (USD 5.4 billion).

BDA (Business Development Asia) Partners served as advisor to Trusting Social on the transaction. Founded in 1996, BDA Partners has offices in China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, the US and Vietnam. It offers advisory services to corporate entities within the chemicals, consumer, health, industrials, service and technology sectors.

By Saulius Simonas Ramanauskas, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Sources

Masan Group press release
https://www.masangroup.com/news/press-releases/Masan-Partners-with-Trusting-Social-to-Accelerate-Consumer-Tech-Vision.html

AsiaTechDaily press release
https://www.asiatechdaily.com/vietnamese-fintech-startup-trusting-social-raises-65m-series-c/

Trusting Social homepage
https://www.trustingsocial.com/

Masan Group homepage
https://masangroup.com/

BDA Partners homepage
https://www.bdapartners.com/

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