Towards this, it has asked shareholders to complete their transactions before 5 p.m. November 28. All further transactions will be delayed until its shares are up on the UPCoM, an exchange set up to encourage companies to list their stocks.

UPCoM is one of three bourses in Vietnam, of which the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) is the biggest with the highest criteria. It requires a company to post profits within the previous two years to list.

VNG, however, posted a loss of over VND70 billion last year.

The unicorn, a startup with a valuation of more than $1 billion, has also announced that its three foreign shareholders, Tenacious Bulldog Holdings Limited, Prosperous Prince Enterprises Limited and Gamevest PTE, have reduced their stakes to below 5% each.

Tenacious Bulldog and Prosperous Prince had a 28.46% stake in VNG, while Gamevest had an 8.14% stake.

The listing on UPCoM is an unexpected move by VNG, given that it had earlier announced plans to list on NASDAQ.

In the first nine months of the year, VNG posted losses of over VND764 billion.

Founded in 2004, VNG operates Zalo, a highly popular messaging and social network platform in Vietnam.

Source: VnExpress

The achievement brought the Vietnamese esports team VND3.78 billion ($152,500) in reward. Cerberus Esports team members who have averaged age of 19.6 has set six records for Vietnam and the APAC region.

Cerberus is also one of the teams that have never had experience in an international tournament. It started the competition with low expectations from international pundits. Twire.gg rated Cerberus to finish the game in 19th place.

However, it performed beyond the audience’s expectations. From the beginning, Cerberus demonstrated good performance and got important scores. The Vietnamese young men got 114 points and became the 6th ranked team in the world, setting unprecedented records for Vietnam as well as the APAC region.

“Our players, who are between 18 and 20 years old, set the record, proving that Cerberus team has great potential. We are confident to maintain our position as one of the leading e-sports teams in Vietnam,” said Michael Minsoo Chung, Cerberus Esports Operations Director.

“We have high hopes to become a team that will bring greater development opportunities for Vietnamese e-sports,” he added.  

Photo: Cerberus Esports

At PUBG Global Championship 2022, 32 teams from four regions, including 12 from Asia, 8 from Europe, 6 from the Asia Pacific, and the remaining 6 from the Americas competed for a total prize of $2 million.

Founded in 2018, Cerberus Esports is a professional e-sports organization headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City. It is currently a training and competition place for five teams from five different e-sports.

Saudi Arabia to invest $38 billion in esports 

In a related development, Saudi Arabia has planned to invest $38 billion to turn the kingdom into a hub for e-sports by 2030 as part of its plan to diversify the economy of the world’s largest oil exporter, Bloomberg News reported.  

Photo: Cerberus Esports

Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, will invest $13 billion in acquiring and developing a games publisher and $18.7 billion in acquiring minority holdings in gaming firms. It will also invest $5.3 billion in established companies in the gaming sector.

Saudi Arabia has already begun to invest actively in the e-gaming business. It owns shares in Activision Blizzard Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., and Nintendo Co. through its Public Investment Fund. The plan has threatened South Korea’s esports suzerainty status.

The Ministry of Information and Communications’ proposed information and communication infrastructure plan for the years 2021 to 2030 is to make Vietnam a “Digital Hub” where data from across the world may be transferred, connected, stored, and processed.

The term “Digital Hub” refers to a network of data storage facilities, cloud computing infrastructure, and Internet traffic exchanged by super developers, as well as global telecommunications, information technology, and digital content, which offer services in several nations and regions.

Vietnam has geographic advantages to become a regional digital hub, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications, including its location between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, close proximity to important and dynamic development centers in the region and the world, where many economies serve as growth engines, and its location on the trans-Asian road route established by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in order to coordinate regional development.

Additionally, Vietnam is situated on the primary axis of the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC), which connects the Pacific and Indian Oceans, offering tremendous potential for quick, economical, and efficient freight transit. 

The chance that Vietnam will emerge as the region’s digital hub is also demonstrated by the number of Internet users and, in particular, the data traffic that migrates to Vietnam. 

Statistics show that there are presently more than 72 million Internet users in Vietnam, with certain applications like Facebook having up to 75.6 million active users and accounts, and Zalo having more than 75.6 million active users, and 74.1 million active users, respectively.

Source: VnEconomy