Da Nang is famed for its numerous beautiful bridges crossing the Han River, its impressive modern architecture, and its wide range of tourist attractions for both domestic and international visitors.

Employees at the Asian Tech company

However, over recent years, the city has also been attracting many young people from other localities in Viet Nam who want to come here to run their own businesses.

37-year-old Truong Dinh Hoang from Hue City is a typical example.  In 2013, after studying for 12 years in Japan, Hoang decided to return to Viet Nam to run his own business.  He selected Da Nang as the place to establish his Asian Tech company which specialises in outsourcing software for export.

In the early days of operation, his company faced numerous difficulties, including a lack of orders, a shortage of high-quality employees, and the inability to pay workers' salaries.  Thanks to his great efforts, creative inspiration, and the highly professional skills he gained in Japan, the young director overcame all those obstacles to ensure the sustainable development of his company.

The company has grown from only a few employees to around 200 today, and its annual growth of revenue has been has reached over 100%.  In addition, it has become involved in training high-quality IT human resources, and attracted new employees from Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, and even other countries.

Hoang remarked, “The IT industry has been developed quite recently in Da Nang, and this therefore brings both opportunities and challenges for local start-up businesses.  I am making plans to help some of my key employees to establish their own businesses in order to enhance the high-quality human resources for the local IT sector”.

Another example is 35-year-old Nguyen Xuan Huy, Director of Da Nang Sioux Embedded Systems.  He said, “The reason why my company has chosen Da Nang as the place to open our first branch in Viet Nam is that the city boasts a modern IT infrastructure and it has emerged as an attractive destination for high-quality human resources”. 

He remarked that after the first 4 years of operation in the city, his company’s software export turnover has jumped by an average of up to 200% every year.  This positive result is attributed to the expansion of the company’s consumer markets into Singapore, the USA, and European countries.

Huy said that his company is focusing on helping its employees to shape their own business ideas and begin their start-up activities in the city.

The Director of the municipal Department of Information and Communications, Mr Nguyen Quang Thanh, highlighted the vital role of such young talent as Hoang and Huy in promoting the local IT sector.  He remarked, “Da Nang is now in need of more young people who have qualifications of professional competence and are willing to help others develop their own start-up business activities.  Such young talent will help the city to promote the development of the local IT sector so that it is on a par with other large cities and provinces in the country, or even other countries in the region”.

Mr Thanh continued, “Many of the city-based IT companies have been cooperating with local universities and junior colleges to help their students develop start-up business activities.  In addition, numerous IT contests have been held in the city to provide useful learning environments for local young people, including GameJam, Monokon, and Startup Runway”.

Da Nang boasts a great potential for IT lovers to boost start-up business activities.  The city’s software export turnover increased from several hundreds of thousands of USD in the 2000s to around 50 million USD in 2015.