Top 5 Vietnamese successful entrepreneurs | FD Mag

These 5 notable Vietnamese start-up entrepreneurs have achieved remarkable successes and made their name in their field.

1. Truong Manh Quan – Founder of Beeketing

Truong Manh Quan founded Beeketing in the beginning of 2014. Prior to that, he developed Brodev, a company working on application expanding for niches social networks in 2008. In2013, he built sieuweb.vn, an easy-to-use tool to help building website quickly.

Quan has a strong passion for programming, which has been nurtured since his childhood. He has learnt programming himself since his senior high school. He has also spent a lot of times studying marketing to attract users and sell products. With his consistent efforts and accumulated experiences, Quan has led Beeketing to a lot of remarkable successes. He was honoured to be on the list “30 Under 30” by Forbes Vietnam in 2016.

Beeketing is a marketing automation platform that helps online sellers to track their customers’ behaviors, analyze and learn customers’ interest and increase sales for their online stores. It won first prize in contest startup “Tel Aviv Startup 2015”. Beeketing also received 125 thousand USD of investment from 500 Startup funds,100 thousand USD of investment from the angel investors and IPP funds, Finland.

Since its establishment, Beeketing has so far been largely bolstered by 30,000 small-to-medium sized enterprises in Europe and USA. Its revenue in 2015 reached 300 thousand dollars. Beeketing set the goal of serving 500 thousand small and medium sized e-commerce businesses worldwide in the next 3 years.

2. Nguyen Hai Ninh – CEO of The Coffee House

A lot of people have been to The Coffee House for a delicious cup of coffee or tea, but perhaps not many have heard of the stories of its CEO and the reason behind its establishment. The Coffee House was co-founded by Nguyen Hai Ninh, who is also the founder of Urban Station. However, he left the latter and dedicated to building The Coffee House chain.

Ninh came to realize that the purpose of setting up a coffee shop is not to sell tea, coffee and other beverages, but to connect people and bring them a relaxed atmosphere. This is why The Coffee House brand came into existence.

Till April of 2017, The Coffee House has managed to open 43 outlets, many of which are located in prime locations in big cities. By that time, The Coffee House had also received 1.8 million USD in investment capital and earned 7 million USD in revenue.

According to Ninh, there are 3 factors that draw customers to the brand: The layout of the shops, customer service and benefits brought by the brand. At present, café businesses are undergoing increasingly cut-throat competition to attract customers. Hence café chains have to frequently update drinks and decor to cater to their customers’ changing tastes.

Because of his achievements and his inspiration to the young people, Nguyen Hai Ninh made it to Forbes’ Asia “30 Under 30”list in 2015.

3. Luong Duy Hoai – Founder of Giaohangnhanh

Delivery services have grown very popular in Vietnam nowadays. That is in sharp contrast with 5 years ago, when Vietnam’s retail and e-commerce system was still at its early stage. In this situation, Luong Duy Hoai established Giao Hang Nhanh (GHN) to solve logistic service problems for e-Commerce businesses in Vietnam. With GHN, Hoai and his colleagues have brought into application high technologies to create a significant change in the logistics industry.

GHN is currently the online delivery service with the highest number of users in Vietnam.  In 10 years’ time, GHN aims to become a leading logistics provider in Vietnam and South East Asia. After 5 years since the founding of GHN, Hoai and his associates have grown their start-up to compete against traditional supply companies throughout the country. By the end of 2016, GHN had transported around 70 million packages a day from its e-commerce business partners, with a COD value of 2 million USD a year. In 2016, GHN launched Ahamove, an Uber model for transportation with the participation of nearly 6,000 drivers in two of Vietnam’s largest cities. Ahamove aims to solve the problem of trucking and providing immediate transportation by motorbike, especially for fresh food products. Luong Duy Hoai resigned from his position at GHN in the end of June 2017. He has moved to the mother company Scommerce to develop smart logistics services. Hoai was named on the list “30 under 30s” of Forbes Vietnam in 2014 and Forbes Asia in 2016.

4. Dinh Viet Hung – Co-founder of DesignBold

Dinh Viet Hung is a co-founder of DesignBold, a Hanoi-based start-up providing simple online graphic design tools for individuals and companies. Officially launched in October of2016, DesignBold allows its users to easily design different types of publications such as Facebook cover, flyer, standee…

Dinh Viet Hung developed DesignBold after 12 years researching Vietnam. After 2-week launching on AppSumo, his start-up generated over 130 million USD in sales. It was regarded as the best start-up deal on AppSumo ever.

DesignBold was rewarded the Best Vietnam Start-up of the Year in 2016. It also became the Winner of Creative Business Cup Vietnam 2016 and Champion of Echelon Start-up Pitching Competition 2016.

When asked to share how DesignBold made success in the industry, Hung said: “If you want to achieve success, you must carefully resolve pressing problems in society so that customers will choose your products.”

Prior to running DesignBold, Hung was a founder of JoomlArt, one of the most experienced Joomla! template providers. Hung is also an angel investor for some start-ups in Vietnam.

Speaking of Vietnam start-up scene over the past 5years, Hung stated: “The startup scene is quite vibrant in many areas, especially IT. But we should carefully evaluate the actual success of Vietnam’s startups under multiple criteria.”

5. Tran Thi Huong – Founder of Moringa oleifera Vietnam

Landing a desired job in a foreign country is a dream of a lot of Vietnamese young people. However, the 30-year-old Tran Thi Huong abandoned her dream job abroad to return to Vietnam to run an agriculture start-up. She founded Moringa oleifera Vietnam Company under the MoriS trademark.

Huong’s intention of setting up Moringa oleifera Vietnam stems from her desire to increase the value of Vietnamese agricultural products. Her start-up specializes in the production and trade of products made from Moringa oleifera plant.

Huong said: “While the Vietnamese market is threatened by unsafe and genetically modified foods, Moringa oleifera Vietnam offers healthy, natural, additive-free products, bringing optimum value to the consumer”.

Tran Huong collaborated with Moringa oleifera growers from Dan Phuong and Soc Son in Hanoi and Khoai Chau in Hung Yen to grow Moringa oleifera adhering to VietGAP quality standards. Accordingly,planting, maintenance, harvesting and processing of Moringa oleifera is done through a process to ensure optimal nutritional and pharmaceutical values. Cold-drying technology is also applied to preserve the active ingredients of the plant. MoriS Moringa oleifera powder is produced from GMO-free raw materials then packed in bags to retain its flavour and nutritional qualities.

After 3 years of operation, Moringa oleifera products are available not only on online channels but also in many organic shops. They were even exported to such foreign markets as Singapore and Japan. MoriS generates around 2.4 billion Dong annually, a remarkable result for a private company operating in agriculture sector.