This is just my take on VIA, others can add their own opinion. Over the Summer VIA was working on implementing segwit with a handful of other coins (BTC/LTC/SYS/VTC) and now has been focusing on lightning network/atomic swaps, which is a feature all 5 coins (plus others) will soon have. Once LN is established, VIA is positioning itself to have anon feature in conjunction with atomic swaps - so it will bring an added value to BTC & LTC for anon transactions.

Aside from that, there are some other features being worked on that I won't be able to explain the benefit of well, because I'm not a techy guy; schnorr signature, color coins, etc. VIA also does merged mining with LTC, so there is an added benefit that it goes will with LTC similar to how LTC is often paired to BTC. I look at BTC = gold, LTC = silver, VIA = copper - and soon will have the added benefit of Styx (anon transactions).