Coc Coc : leading search engine in Vietnam

In May, 2013, Cốc Cốc launched its main products, a local Vietnamese web browser and search engine. Within a year, Cốc Cốc attracted its first 10 million users. Since then, Cốc Cốc’s monthly audience has grown to more than 20 million unique users according to its March 2016 Google Analytics stats. Global Stat Counter ranks Cốc Cốc as the second most popular browser in Vietnam.

Headquartered in Hanoi, Cốc Cố is a company that  creates big data driven advertising solutions for the Vietnamese Market.

They have two main products:

  • Cốc Cốc Browser = 21 million unique active users per month
  • Cốc Cốc advertising platform = 4500 active clients last month

In addition to the browser and search engine, Cốc Cốc is also developing a detailed mapping and POI service as well as a real-time bidding advertising system. Cốc Cốc has also brought $30M in investments to the Vietnamese Internet industry.

Currently, Cốc Cốc has more than 400 staff and is aiming to enter new ASEAN markets in 2017.

The company  has 4500 active clients including Pepsi, Uniliver, Mercedes, Nissan, GM, Ford, Sony, Samsung, Lenovo, Naver, Agoda, Lazada etc.

Founders:

Lê Văn Thanh

Graduated from the Moscow State University, in Mathematics and Computer Science department. He was the  winner of the 3rd prize of national Olympiad in informatics in 2001. His responsibility at Cốc Cốc include the development of the search engine core and linguistic algorithms.

  • Nguyễn Thanh Bình

Graduated from the Moscow State University, Mathematics and Computer Science department. He won 3rd prize in the National Mathematics competition in 1995 and 2nd prize of National Mathematics competition in 2001. At Cốc Cốc, his main responsibilities include Finance, Legal, GR, HR and recruitment departments.

  • Nguyễn Đức Ngọc

Graduated with honors from the Moscow State University, Mathematics and Computer Science department. He currently is the lead Product Manager of Cốc Cốc Search Engine and Cốc Cốc Browser. Ngoc is the author of the majority of the key competitive advantages of all Cốc Cốc products. He also took responsibility for D&A department.

  • Lavrenko Victor

Victor Lavrenko is a Russian Internet entrepreneur and computer scientist. As the former Chief Strategy and Finance officer at Mail.ru, Victor was also an integral part of a large Russian Internet company with a $4.34B market capitalization.

Competitors:

The company’s main competitors are Google Chrome, Firefox, and IE.

However, the company believes they are set to dominate the market because of their innovative functions that are especially useful for the Vietnamese market. For example, when a user types anywhere on the internet in Vietnamese in their browser, there is no need to input VN tones and other diacritical marks, saving typing time by 30%. The company  also downloads up to 8 times faster than any other browser.

In terms of advertising, there is not competition as  other browsers do not sell advertising in the country.

Funding:

Given their explosive success, the company just received usd $14 million investment from German Hubert Burda, bringing their total funding to usd$34 million. Hubert Burda, a leading media group, is a strong investor in e-commerce companies