Vietnam’s Masan Group’s subsidiary recently announced its entry into telecoms by completing the acquisition of a 70 percent stake in Mobicast for $13 million, according to media reports. Mobicast, which operates from the Reddi brand, is a Vietnamese startup full-service mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
MVNOs are wireless communication service providers that do not own the wireless infrastructure. Instead, they partner with traditional mobile network operators (MNO) to use their radio spectrum-based transmission services that help provide telecom services to its customers. This business model serves as a win-win since MNOs increase network capacity with benefit from MVNOs light asset business model.
Masan Group CEO Danny Le told the media, “Our mission is to develop the most efficient integrated O2O [online-to-offline] products and services platform to serve 50 million consumers throughout their daily journey by 2025. Reddi is the first step to digitalise our platform and synchronise our products and services into a unified offering. While we are in the early innings, we have all the strategic components to develop the most cost-effective consumer acquisition model thereby lowering the costs of our services and products for the benefit of our consumers – this is the definition of Point of Life.”
Since this is going to be the first digital MVNO in Vietnam that has invested to build a full E-MVNO platform, Reddi aims to provide customers with a seamlessly integrated and a user-friendly online experience with the goal of transforming into a super app based on core services such as mobile telecommunications.