Investors show keen interest in high tech startups
2020/01/09
Investors say they have huge amounts of capital in hands and are seeking good technology startups to disburse the money.
Many large corporations, investors and experts in many business fields at Techfest 2019, called the national startup day, were seeking digital technology startups and breakthrough ideas
The investors noticed a lack of good technology startups even at the event which gathered 300 technology startups in different fields, which were selected by the organizing board. The number of startups present at the event was every higher, if counting the ones which did not have stalls there.
“We need creative ideas which can utilize your technologies to cut nvestment and operation costs,” said Ha Trung Dung from VNPT, a well known telecom group.
“VNPT has more than 30 million mobile subscribers and we can support startups in custom, finance and knowledge. But we need new ideas and new business models,” he said.
Khoa Hoc va Phat Trien newspaper quoted its sources as reporting that Viettel, the largest telecom network in Vietnam, intends to take over Medlink, the startup which develops websites and mobile apps connecting drugstores and pharmacy companies and just won first prize at Vietchallenge 2019.
Large telecom groups in the world such as SoftBank are also willing to spend big money to buy shares in technology companies and startups in many different fields.
According to Nguyen Dinh Thang, president of LienViet Post Bank, “banks want to carry out digital transformation and build digital technology. However, they cannot build cumbersome apparatus and employ high numbers of workers to build products. They tend to join forces with other companies, especially startups and fintechs to do this."
In other words, technology startups have great opportunities to team up with banks to develop their products.
The representatives from the logistics sector also said ‘there is huge amount of work that startups can solve’ becausemany works are still done manually.
Dao Trong Khoa, deputy chair of the Vietnam Logistics Association (VLA), said logistics firms need solutions to digitalize core activities of logistics services. Since the digital transformation process in the sector is going slowly, the opportunities for technology firms are great.
Vietnam has 143 million mobile subscribers, and 60 million internet and social network users, accounting for 64 percent of population.
Vietnam also has a skilled labor force to exploit the opportunities, with the number of technology students among the world’s top 15.
Kim Chi
