Vingroup to develop Vietnam's own Sillicon Valley

Le Thi Thu Thuy, vice chairwoman of Vingroup and chairwoman of VinFast

Within the framework of the national forum on developing Vietnamese technology companies on May 9, Le Thi Thu Thuy, vice chairwoman of Vingroup cum chairwoman of VinFast, shared the group’s experiences in joining the technology sector as part of the country's digital transfer.

Le said, "About ten years ago, there was only one tech company (Microsoft) among the ten most successful companies in the world, but now only one of the ten largest companies does not deal in technology."

That means technology is the shortest and the most effective way, perhaps the only way leading to a breakthrough for an economy.

As a result, Vingroup has announced altering its development strategy by incorporating technology as one of the three pillars of its operation, next to industry and trade services. The conglomerate is now planning to become the region's leading technology corporation within the next ten years.

"The group sees this as both the future of business and the responsibility of contributing to the prosperity of the country," said Thuy.

Only eight months after the alternative, Vingroup has made some significant progress in developing and applying technology in every sector of the group. Specifically, Vingroup launched the VinFast automobile and e-motorbike manufacturing plant, as well as released three automobile models and two electronic motorbike models. By 2020, VinFast will release more than 10 new automobile and motorbike models.

VinSmart has already launched four smartphone models and plans to launch 12 more at the end of the year. Additionally, VinSmart has been developing its operation system.

A plant with a total annual capacity of 100 million products is going to start construction. Its capacity in the first phase will be 30 million products per year. Additionally, VinSmart is going to release tablets and researching the production of air conditioners, TV, refrigerators, IoT devices, cameras, and 5G smartphones.

Le Thi Thu Thuy also revealed that the group is developing a project named "doctor assistant," led by Truong Quoc Hung, director of VinBrain (under VinTech), former senior manager of Microsoft.

"In fact, even in the US, people usually spend a total of $3 trillion per year for healthcare, but the rate of failure in disease diagnosis via images is rather high, accounting for 10 per cent of deaths, while the rate of failure in X-Ray diagnosis is up to 30 per cent. We have no statistics for Vietnam, but it cannot be less than the figures of the US," said Thuy.

The "doctor assistant" project will apply AI, computer vision, and natural language processing (NLP) to reduce failure rates. If it is developed successfully, Vingroup will hand over it for free to all hospitals across the country.

In addition, the vice chairwoman of Vingroup revealed plans to invest into good startups, as well as develop VinTech City into the "Silicon Valley" of Vietnam to serve the incubation of startup technology companies.