After nearly 5 years of laying solid foundations for its startup ecosystem, Da Nang has successfully implemented incubation programmes for many tech startups, and helped them build a strong network of customers across Viet Nam, and the world at large.

Most noticeably, many 'Made-in-Da Nang' startups have received timely support from the municipal government, hereby gaining a stronger foothold in the startup arena.

Below are some of the best 'Da Nang-developed' startups you need to watch out for.

Cashbag - online refund app

As the name suggests, Cashbag is a mobile application where you get money back in exchange for your purchases online through Cashbag’s affiliate links. This highly effective app was developed in 2019 by the Hai Chau District-based Cashbag Co., Ltd.

The Cashbag Co., Ltd., has a total of 35 employees, and its app has attracted nearly one million users

By using this app, you can receive a refund (up to 25% of the amount you spent on an item) in your registered account.

In reality, Cashbag actually gets a commission on the sale of the merchant’s product. Therefore, it then turns around, and gives its users a cut of that commission.

Till date, Cashbag has topped Viet Nam’s affiliate marketing applications based on its gross merchandise value and the number of items sold per day. 

Cashbag's current partner network consists of more than 20 e-commerce websites, including Shopee, Tiki and Sendo, along with such online accommodation reservation providers as Agoda, Booking and Vntrip.

As of late December 2020, Cashbag has refunded nearly 42 billion VND for its over 5.3 million orders in total.

Mr Thong Le Anh Tuan, the founder of Cashbag, said that, during the 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic provided a boost for e-commerce, thereby helping his company’s revenue increase by 5 times against 2019.

Currently, the Cashbag Co., Ltd., has a combined total of 35 employees, and its app has attracted nearly one million users.

In 2021, Cashbag plans to expand its services to thousands of drinking and eating stores, and shopping areas across Viet Nam.

EM&AI - virtual assistants

Possessing two remarkable products, namely Virtual Quality Controller (Virtual QC) and Virtual Agent, the Da Nang-based EM&AI JSC has risen to fame as one of Viet Nam’s pioneering companies in promoting intensive research into state-of-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, the hardest branch of artificial intelligence (AI) for delivering better customer experience.

Virtual QC is an automated call assessment solution based on EM&AI’s proprietary machine learning technologies such as Vietnamese NLP, Speech to text, and Sentiment Analysis & Criteria Mapping.

This comprehensive is built for the purpose of monitoring and measuring service quality exclusively for call centres. In particular, Speaker Diarization is one of the platform’s outstanding features as it supports voice separation of customers and employees for more accurate evaluation results.

In addition, Virtual QC system can handle input data with low sound quality caused by contact center working environment, and it also helps businesses easily train and customise models according to their needs.

Additionally, the platform is integrate seamlessly to CRM, database, contact centre software to get livestream data, evaluate and deliver results in seconds.

Interestingly, Virtual QC may take users by surprise by identifying the emotions of the agent/customer through detecting emotional vocabulary and amplitude anomalies of voice.

Last, but not least, the product boasts a friendly interface, and being intuitive, easy to use for everyone and really quick to deploy.

In addition to the Virtual QC, EM&AI has made the debut of Virtual Agent, which is a conversational AI platform that powers automated conversations between a business and its customers via social media, on website, application, or even on voice assistants like Google Home.

Compared to Virtual QC, Virtual Agent is no less highly inviting as it can plan for any complex scenarios with context management, create more human-like conversations with NLP technology, and improve the productivity of Contact Center with Hybrid Chat.

Thanks to its highly practical products, the EM&AI JSC in late November 2020 finished as a runner-up in TECHFEST 2020 hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Besides its success at TECHFEST 2020 with its two aforementioned products, EM&AI won the top prize in the Startup Pitching 2020 contest organised by the Viet Nam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) in November, and the Innovative Financial Technology Solution award at the Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OCB)- held Open API Challenge contest early December 2020.

Also encouragingly, EM&AI stands proudly as the only Vietnamese company to secure a berth in the top 30 prospective startups at the Global Open Innovation Korea contest held by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) in 2020.

The Da Nang-based EM&AI JSC's employees

Umbalena – Viet Nam's leading digital library for kids

Developed by Da Nang-based VOOC Technology company in mid-2019, Umbalena app aims at considerably cultivating a love of reading among children.

Umbalena serves as a large online bookstore showing off thousands of highly-inviting books in Vietnamese and English, targeting children aged 2 to 8 years, and their parents.

Poems and stories on the app feature attractive content, eye-catching images, expressive voices, and interesting questions.

Apart from its members who are in charge of technologies and content, Umbalena has developed a network of freelancers across Viet Nam, including 6 to 7-year-old kids.

This app certainly can't completely replace printed books, but it's a wonderful option for children during their off-school time instead of playing video games or watching useless videos on Youtube.

Till date, the app has had more than 60,000 downloads and over 20,000 users.

Last October, this highly practical app won the first prize in the category of pioneering in technology and digital transformation in the National Women’s Startup Competition 2020. One month later, it won the top prize in the Viet Nam Startup Wheel 2020.

By PHONG LAN - Translated by M.D