How to achieve a successful start-up is a question that is being asked by the startup community. But there is no answer to this. Binh Duong's start-up community is considered to have many advantages.
Great opportunity for start-ups
At the conference "Start-up Exchange in 2017" hosted by Business Forum Newspaper and Thu Dau Mot University, participants all said that young people in Binh Duong province had many advantages when starting a business. According to the assessment, Binh Duong has many potential and advantages to develop industry and services. Due to creative ways, Binh Duong has made a spectacular breakthrough and emerged as a bright spot, a typical industrial center of Vietnam. In parallel with attracting foreign investment, provincial leaders always pay attention to building a business environment, start-up ecosystem, encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises to develop.
Experts share experiences at Startup Forum held at Thu Dau Mot University in November 2017.
In September 2017, the provincial People's Committee promulgated a policy to support the national innovative start-up system by 2025 in Binh Duong province for the period 2017-2020. Accordingly, the specific objective of 2017-2018 is to gradually improve the mechanism and legal corridors to support innovative start-up activities and improve the capacity of the participants in the start-up activities; building a provincial innovative start-up portal; establishing a community center for innovation and supporting innovative start-ups in Binh Duong; assisting the development of 30 innovative projects.
Nguyen Quoc Cuong, Director of the Department of Science and Technology, said that the department has a fund for scientific and technological development, including research funding for students. However, commercialization activities for scientific and technological products of Vietnam in general and of Binh Duong in particular still has limitations. Therefore, in 2018, Department of Science and Technology will connect research groups, schools and enterprises, connect start-up groups with enterprises together. Currently, Binh Duong province is implementing a "Triple Helix" model (State-Industry-Acedemia) in smart city development; this would create more opportunities for the commercialization of scientific research products.
Binh Duong has the advantage of having big and growing market, start-up community is in a "golden population" period. To promote the start-up, participants in the "Start-up exchanges in 2017" recommend strengthening the activities of research, development, technology transfer; connection between academia, universities and businesses. In addition, the commercialization of science and technology products, focusing on product innovation for the market and active participation in the global supply chain. Journalist Pham Hung, head of the national start-up program of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said that to achieve the target, Binh Duong was one of the leading localities in start-up, needed to increase the number of enterprises by at least twice now, to become the center of national start-up; Thu Dau Mot University needed to step up theoretical training in parallel with deployment and practical application for graduated students to quickly apply their knowledge into production, business enrichment. Then, many good start-ups of the province will appear.
There is no general formula for starting a business
Master - Postgraduate Huynh Cong Danh, head of Economics Faculty at Thu Dau Mot University, said that the program"Start-up exchanges in 2017" was really useful for young people being interested in startup and having ideas about starting a business. Here, the students exchanged, learned experiences from successful entrepreneurships. "From my standpoint, I do not think there is a specific generic formula for start-ups. Besides the talent, the most important is the young people must have passion, aspirations and self-winning in all circumstances," said Mr. Danh.
Sharing his experience, Dang Duc Thanh, General Director of Green Herb Investment Joint Stock Company (Ben Tre) acknowledged, to start a successful business, it was important to build a feasible business project. This requires two factors, first is innovation; second, the project must be opportune and meet real needs of consumers.
Ha Huy Cuong, Deputy General Director of An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank, said that the now 700,000 enterprises had about 95% of SMEs. On average, about 70% of start-ups fail, while the more 10% will also fail in the next year. In the third year, only about 10% of the enterprises start to survive. According to Mr. Cuong, young people need to have passion ans goof financial potential to start a new business, do not follow the trend. Vietnam is currently ranked 47th out of more than 200 countries with high start-up indexes worldwide.
Under the direction of the Government, by 2020, the country would have 1 million enterprises. Mr. Cuong said that only about 0.5% of these enterprises are startup enterprises, equivalent to about 5,000 enterprises, it would be a success. An Binh Bank has a credit package to support startups worth VND3 billion. However, not all projects are able to access this fund, but only those projects that are feasible woul be selected by the bank. Mr. Cuong affirmed that if the startup idea was serious and potential, young people would not need banks, but investors, start-up funds would find them to pour capital. It is the most efficient way to raise funds.
Reported by Tieu My – Translated by Ngoc Huynh
