The days of hypergrowth are over, with disciplined profitability becoming the ultimate measure of ambition for some of Asia’s most prominent tech founders, who spoke at DealStreetAsia’s Asia PE-VC Summit 2025 in Singapore recently.
During a session titled ‘Enterprise corner: Of balancing runway, bottom line and ambitions‘, panellists agreed that as easy capital recedes, investors are rewarding disciplined execution and sustainable earnings over user-acquisition sprees.
Carro co-founder and CEO Aaron Tan said the lesson from the past few funding cycles is clear: quality of revenue is more important than sheer scale.
“If you asked me 10 years ago, I’d have said growth,” he said. “Today it’s profitability—and more specifically, quality of revenues. The funding for the last couple of years has taught us… the quality of revenues matters more than anything else. Once you’ve got profit margins and stuff like that… the reason why we’ve been able to grow EBITDA double, year on year, is really this whole discipline,” he added.
Tan pointed to specific decisions Carro has made to protect margins while maintaining growth. “It’s really about resource reallocation,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not worth fighting against the market. If the market is going against you, there could be a reason why… learn to ride the wave of the market versus fighting against the market.”
While Carro explores a potential public listing, Tan said profitability remains paramount. “Market permitting, yes, we do expect to hopefully do this [IPO]… by next year,” he said.
“We are definitely prepared for a US IPO if possible. But of course… we have not decided whether it’s Hong Kong, it could be SGX… I think at the end of the day, we have not decided,” he said while cautioning against speculation.
A Reuters report, quoting Tan, said the firm is in talks with banks including HSBC and UBS and will decide on the hiring after finalising the listing venues. “I will only list the business once I have a little bit more visibility, for instance, if my plan is to do $100 million and I see $120-150 million EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) in the next year,” Tan said.
According to Carro’s fiscal year 2024, it posted an EBITDA of S$43 million ($32 million) and a 4% EBITDA margin, while gross profit margin rose to 12%. Its gross profit increased 49% from a year earlier to S$124 million ($92.6 million). Founded in 2015, Carro operates in seven markets in Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. It plans to expand to Australia as its next foray to introduce its flagship products, a used car marketplace and lender platform.
Kelly Wong, CEO of Vietnam’s VNG, described a similar shift in priorities across the company’s four business lines—gaming, chat, fintech, and B2B. “At a group level, we really focus on profitability because that’s really where we get measured in shareholders’ returns,” he said.
“Between the different businesses, we have slightly different priorities for each one depending on the stage… For example, for the game side, day one it was profitable already… chat now is also profitable, and then that’s moving into fintech, which is hopefully becoming profitable in the next year, and then B2B as well.”
Wong said VNG sets a strict timeline for each new investment. “We usually operate on a three-year basis. Three years makes sense to us, mainly because it probably takes a year to prove a concept, go to market, the second year to really see their scalability, and the third year to really see if the profitability can also scale.”
He also pointed to the hard decisions the company has made to stay focused. “When we started looking at expanding outside of Vietnam, we invested heavily into regional markets, setting up publishing bases in the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, and Malaysia,” Wong said.
“We quickly realised that not every single market was right for us… a really good example is the Philippines… so we just had to decide to cut back on the entire studio. We still offer publishing in the Philippines, but we don’t have a localised presence.”
Founded in 2004 as a PC game publisher, VNG Corporation has transformed into a technology leader with a diversified portfolio that includes mobile gaming, communications, media, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and fintech.
In Q1 2025, VNG reached net revenue of VND 2,232 billion ($85 million), and adjusted operating profit rose to VND 185 billion ($7.1 million), up sharply from VND 1 billion in Q1 2024. Its net loss after tax improved by 52% YoY to VND 15 billion ($576,000).
Profit through patience
From the semiconductor sector, Dr BJ Han, co-founder and CEO of Silicon Box, said that even capital-intensive deep-tech ventures must keep profitability in view. “My business is… semiconductor and manufacturing,” he said. “I happen to agree with both of the gentlemen’s comments… quality is important. But to me, semiconductors are more sustainable.”
Han explained the need for rigorous milestones despite long product cycles. “Semiconductor is a really, really long cycle… You have to come up with quantified milestones to three different angles of how to acquire customers… and then you make a design meeting, and then qualification, and then volume sustainability,” he said. “Usually, investors are pretty satisfied with that. Step-wise, quantified milestones achieved.”
For Han, profitability is simple: “I’m a scientist and engineer, so I don’t know those numbers, but to me, profitability is profit. Profit is actually net profit. You can have EBITDA, you can have cash flow, you can have many different ways of looking at it… But to me, it is all the process and the way to move to net profit margin.”
He added that managing capital requires flexibility. “Capital intensity is the nature of business… the important part of dealing with the capital is how to make the capital more flexible. If A is not working, you have to have a contiguous plan of B and C and D… you have to deal with something up front, well thought of, of what to do.”
Silicon Box claimed its unicorn status at the end of 2023, after securing $200 million in a Series B round, which saw participation from British-based asset manager Praesidium Capital, United States hedge fund Maverick Capital, and growth investor BRV Capital.
According to its filings with Singapore’s ACRA for the financial year ended December 31, 2023, the company reported losses ballooned by 224.7% to $17.11 million, while revenue stood at $105k. The losses were due to the need to purchase property, plant, and equipment for operations.
In July 2023, the company launched its $2-billion advanced semiconductor manufacturing foundry in Singapore. The 73,000-square-metre facility in Tampines is designed to manufacture semiconductor chiplet interconnections for AI, electric vehicles, and wearables.
Despite representing different industries, the three leaders agreed that growth and profitability are not mutually exclusive. “The truth of the matter is that you can be growing revenues and at the same time growing profitability,” Carro’s Aaron Tan said.
VNG’s Kelly Wong echoed the point. “We really believe that you can be profitable and growing at the same time… we have to find a very delicate balance within each of the business units for that.”
Tan recalled an early advice from a venture backer that he ultimately chose to ignore. “One big, very big fund once told me, Aaron, why are you trying to be profitable? You should spend as much money as you can and earn as much money as you can. We will always be there to support you to advance more in your company,” he said.
“That was at Series A… but honestly, post Series C in 2021, that would have been the worst thing. If I were still unprofitable, I assure you that the fund would never be there to support me.”
