Women’s Initiative for Start-ups and Entrepreneurship (WISE) Viet Nam is calling for startup projects from Da Nang and other Vietnamese localities to register for its WISE Accelerator 2021, a business acceleration programme supporting female entrepreneurs.

After two years of organisation, the programme has provided financial support to more than 30 potential female entrepreneurs, with a combined total of 2.5 million US$ of investment capital being raised for participating startups.

WISE Accelerator 2021 participants must be women-owned businesses or those creating products targeting women, and all of them must have products suitable for the Vietnamese market and plans to access international markets, and wish to call for international investment.

The programme’s female participants will have the chance to connect with angel investment networks and venture capital funds, along with the promotion of their exports through digital export platforms.
With regard to the event’s timeline, applications are accepted until 15 March, 2021 at https://forms.gle/2NvRNnYcbgX1rq4h8.

WISE supported by the Australian Aid and Asian Development Bank (ADB), Swiss EP and Saigon Innovation Hub (SIHUB), is a network of high profile startup ecosystem builders to support women startup leaders. WISE’s mission is to create equal opportunities for Vietnamese women to succeed in business.

In a similar vein, the Viet Nam Women's Union has launched a startup contest for women with the theme ‘Female entrepreneurs elevate OCOP (One Commune-One Product)’.

The event’s goal is to create new products and services contributing to creating breakthroughs for Viet Nam's national socio-economic development.

Participants are divided into enterprise and non-enterprise groups.

In detail, the enterprise group consists of business and cooperatives owned and managed by women, or ones with their underprivileged female employees accounting for at least 50% of the total staff and those with products targeting underprivileged women in the society.

The non-enterprise group consists of underprivileged, disable and HIV-affected women affected by HIV, and those who have reintegrated into the community, female students. This group also accepts the registration by poverty reduction livelihood models whose member households living in border and extremely difficult communes accounting at least two thirds of the total.

Participants are required to send ideas for their competition in the enterprise group at https://bitly.com.vn/e9mfox and at https://bitly.com.vn/e9mfox for non-enterprise group not later than 15 April.

By MINH LE – Translated by A.T