Building Beyond the Pilot: GenAI Fund Backs Bonbon’s $500K Pre-Seed Round

GenAI Fund has invested in Bonbon Mobility as part of its US$500,000 pre-seed round, led by Tasco. This investment deepens our commitment to a venture we helped build. Together with Tasco, we sourced founders, shaped the opportunity, and supported teams as they turned ideas into live products.

Bonbon is the winning venture from Tasco Foundry Wash3000, the venture-building program jointly implemented by Tasco and GenAI Fund. Its platform connects car owners with garages and car-care providers, bringing a more convenient digital experience to a market still shaped by fragmented, independent service points.

The investment marks the next chapter of that journey, and a concrete outcome of our approach to building ventures alongside corporate partners.

From 100 Applications to One Winning Venture

Wash3000 began with a practical opportunity: how could technology connect Vietnam’s car-care providers with drivers and make everyday services easier to discover, book, and use?

Together with Tasco, we built a program around that challenge, bringing founders closer to the industry, its operators, and the customers they hoped to serve. GenAI Fund helped source teams, shape the venture-building journey, and support product, operational, and commercial validation.

From a pool of around 100 applications, the program narrowed to the Top 10, then to three finalists: Bonbon, Rua La Sach, and TrueCare.

The three teams competed to turn their concepts into businesses. Over six weeks, they deployed production code, onboarded real operators, and activated users within Tasco’s automotive ecosystem. The final stage brought the focus onto live products and execution in a real operating environment.

Bonbon emerged as the winner. Today, its completed pre-seed round carries that work forward into its next stage of commercial development.

For more on how the program began, read our earlier Wash3000 story.

Building the Conditions for a New Venture

Our role in Wash3000 reflects how we approach corporate venture building: start with a business challenge, connect it with the right founders, and help the team test its solution in the market.

Enterprises bring assets that can be difficult for an early-stage startup to access independently—customer relationships, industry knowledge, distribution, and infrastructure. Founders bring the focus and ability to turn those assets into a new product and business.

Making that relationship work requires hands-on support. Through Wash3000, GenAI Fund helped connect Tasco’s strategic priorities with venture teams and supported their progress through successive stages of development and validation.

Tasco brought deep automotive expertise and an ecosystem spanning car ownership, payments, and vehicle services. This gave teams a setting in which to understand operational needs and develop their products alongside the realities of the industry.

As Laura Nguyen, CEO & Managing Partner of GenAI Fund, explains:

“Bonbon is a successful outcome built from a real business challenge identified by Tasco. The core value of the Venture Builder model lies in transforming a corporation’s assets and scale into a launchpad that enables startups to move faster, while requiring the team to demonstrate its operational capabilities and the tangible value it delivers to users.”

For us, the investment extends that relationship. Having supported Bonbon through the venture-building process, we are now backing its next stage as a co-investor.

What Bonbon Is Building

Bonbon connects the digital customer journey with services delivered by physical garages and car-care centers.

For drivers, the opportunity is a simpler way to find and access vehicle care. For service providers, it is a way to build a digital presence, reach customers, and improve how they manage their services.

The model builds on an existing network of independent operators. Bonbon is responsible for developing its partner garage network, with an initial focus on car washing and vehicle care and a longer-term ambition to support more services throughout the vehicle lifecycle.

The new funding will support the development of Bonbon’s technology platform, expansion of its partner network, improvements to the customer experience, and a broader service offering.

Founder and CEO Nguyen Chi Dung says the next stage will also focus on digitalization tools that help garage partners operate more efficiently and reach customers more effectively.

As that network grows, consistent service quality and value for both drivers and garage partners will remain central to building a lasting business.

Learn more about Bonbon: https://bonbon.com.vn/

Taking the Next Step Together

Bonbon’s pre-seed round demonstrates the connection we are building between venture development and early-stage investment.

The venture-building process creates space to identify a problem, bring together a team, and develop evidence through execution. Investment then gives that team resources to take the next step.

For GenAI Fund, Bonbon is an important milestone in our partnership with Tasco and in our wider work with enterprises across Southeast Asia. We see opportunities to apply this approach wherever a clear business challenge meets strong industry assets and founders ready to build.

We are excited to continue working with Bonbon and Tasco as the venture enters its next chapter.

Have a business challenge that could become a new venture? Connect with us to explore a venture-building partnership: [email protected]