Investors at the launching of reality show Shark Tank Season 6 in HCM City on Tuesday. The show will be broadcast starting September 25 on VTV3. — Photo Courtesy Shark Tank organiser

HCM CITY — The sixth season of Shark Tank Vietnam, a reality television series where start-ups seek investments from a panel of investors, will be broadcast starting September 25.

Produced by TV Hub and VTV Digital, the show will be on air every Monday at 20:30 on VTV3.

This season, Shark Tank Vietnam will have 16 episodes featuring 56 startups.

The sixth season of Shark Tank comes amid an economic slowdown. In the first eight months of this year, 40,000 companies had to close, an increase of nearly 27 per cent year-on-year. 

Therefore, the new season of this reality show is considered as an opportunity for start-ups to accelerate their businesses.

Shark Tank this year will feature many new investors who are known as “sharks”, including Phạm Thanh Hưng, deputy chairman of Cen Group; Nguyễn Hoà Bình, CEO of NextTech Group; Lê Hùng Anh, managing director of BIN Corporation Group; Louis Nguyễn, CEO of Saigon Asset Management; Erik Jonsson, partner at venture capital firm Antler; Lê Hàn Tuệ Lâm, director of Nextrans Vietnam; and Bùi Quang Minh, chairman of Beta Group.

Each of the investors specialises in different kinds of startups.

For example, Phạm Thanh Hưng will focus on start-ups who do business in traditional sectors and apply technology in their production.

Louis Nguyễn will seek start-ups in the sectors of technology, health-care, education and F&B who are in the Series A+ round. He also prefers firms that have good ESG practices.

Erik Jonsson, meanwhile, likes B2B startups who promise revenue of US$100 million after five to seven years.

After five seasons, Shark Tank has helped push the development of start-ups in Việt Nam. Many start-ups have reached high growth in revenue after joining the show.

Á Châu English Centre reached a growth of 30 per cent and opened three more locations after the show. The company gets an additional 400-500 students in each location after only one year instead of two or three years like in the past.

Startup CoolMate, meanwhile, received 1.6 million viewers to its website. They have about 3,000-4,000 orders per day and revenue for 2023 is expected to increase by 80 times over the previous year.

To date, 243 startups have participated in the show and 143 of them have been invested in by sharks. 

After Shark Tank, 10 startups have successfully raised capital worth millions of US dollars.

Shark Tank is an American business reality television series that premiered in 2009. The show is the American franchise of the show Dragons’ Den, which originated in Japan as Money Tigers in 2001. — VNS