Tech start-ups on the rise in Vietnam

Many Vietnamese young people started their businesses by developing technologies that are applied in various sectors, including education, healthcare, agriculture, they said.

 

According to Dinh Ba Tien, head of the HCM City University of Natural Sciences' Information Technology Faculty, start-ups in the technology sector have not faced barriers, while technology provides opportunities to expand to the world market.

 

Many fields in daily life need to apply technological solutions to cut back costs and time.

 

Tien urged young people to relentlessly stay up to date on the technology trends in the world market, and choose proper solutions to deploy in Vietnam.

 

With their knowledge and ability, Vietnam's young generation is expected to create tech products to meet the market's demand and boost the development of local businesses further as well as contribute to addressing the shortcomings of the country.

 

Start-ups have been booming in Vietnam in recent times, with about 1,000 tech start-up projects each year. A start-up ecosystem, which includes venture capital, angel investors, accelerators, incubators, government funds, businesses, and others, has also developed to support start-ups.

 

Truong Ly Hoang Phi, director of the Business Start-up Support Centre (BSSC), said the centre provided start-ups with support in terms of finance, branding, mentoring and start-up connection activities.

 

The centre would organise a Start-up Exchange later this month to enable start-ups to present their projects to attract investment, she said.

 

Dang To Loan, deputy director of Sai Gon-Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), which is the co-founder of the HCM City Startup Investment and Innovation Fund, said the bank set aside specific programmes to support feasible and high growth potential start-up projects.

 

Le Hai Binh, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Ecommerce Association (VECOM) and founder and chairman of Mat Bao Corp, said his company had accompanied start-ups for many years as an angel investor, saying that it was willing to support feasible start-up projects.

 

Nguyen Huu Thong from Mobiphone Service Company region 3 said education, medical and agricultural sectors were high potential sectors for tech start-ups, adding that his company was also willing to co-operate with promising start-ups.

 

At the seminar, Binh suggested start-ups should learn from the failures of other companies to avoid repeating the mistakes.

 

Organised by VECOM, BSSC, and chilli.vn, the seminar themed Tech Start-up was expected to help provide young start-ups with new directions in starting their businesses as well as connect them with successful start-ups and potential investors. 

Last week, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (VNPT) launched a satellite mobile service known as VinaPhone-S.

The VinaPhone-S is a satellite mobile service covering about two-thirds globally and 100 per cent of Vietnamese territory. With this satellite mobile service, customers using post-paid sim cards can easily implement voice services, short message service (SMS), and satellite navigation (GPS) to ensure their communication anywhere, without being dependent on telecoms infrastructure, weather, and geography.

Research recently conducted by Oxford Economics says that the mobile internet sector may contribute US$5.1 billion to Vietnam from 2015 to 2020. This amount was equivalent to 6.2 per cent of the country's gross domestic products (GDP) growth forecast.

According to the research, the sector is also expected to create roughly 145,600 new jobs for the country during the five-year period, or 3.2 per cent of the total employment growth estimate. 

The mobile penetration ratio in Vietnam will almost double to nearly 80 per cent by 2020 from what it was at the end of 2015, which is expected to match the forecast subscription rate for the entire Southeast Asia region.