Returning Vietnamese are leaving their mark on Vietnam’s burgeoning startup scene

Christina’s founder Thu Nguyen / Photo credit: Benjamin Bathke

“Today, he’s here back in the country of his birth because he said his personal passion is improving the life of every Vietnamese.”

Although this sentence, uttered by Barack Obama during his historic official visit to Vietnam in 2016, wasn’t aimed at Thu Nguyen, he felt that the former US President was addressing him directly. An American of Vietnamese descent, Nguyen is among the thousands of Vietnamese who have returned after years or even decades abroad.

Their homecoming is seldom spurred by sentimentality or longing for their ancestral land. More often than not, returnees cite a mix of reasons, such as Vietnam’s boom economy, which has risen by an average of six percent in the past 10 years. Its nascent but growing tech scene, low cost of living, relatively cheap labor, as well as the availability of tech talent are also key factors.

“There’s a diversity of talent from around the world coming to Vietnam because of all this excitement and because it’s easy to bootstrap stuff here,” says Nguyen. The 35-year-old entrepreneur founded Christina’s, a Ho Chi Minh City-based travel and accommodation startup, in 2014.

Nguyen and many other returning Vietnamese have work experience at multinational companies, an understanding of different cultures, and English proficiency – skills that are often sorely lacking in Vietnam’s startup scene. These have helped them make their names as startup founders, enabling them to leave a significant mark on the burgeoning startup ecosystem.

Growing outside one’s comfort zone

After graduating from Boston College and a stint at an investment bank, Nguyen returned to Vietnam for the first time in 2007. When he got there, he was finally able to satisfy his deep curiosity about his birthplace by taking motorbike trips across the country. Being on the road allowed him to get to know and appreciate Vietnam’s landscape and cultural diversity, and this set him on the path towards entrepreneurship.

Christina’s rents out hotel-standard apartments on behalf of their owners – similar to the new Airbnb Plus – and offers trips with its own tour guides. What started out as Nguyen’s side hustle four years ago has now grown to a company with 320 employees and US$2.5 million in funding.

Christina’s is focusing on growth so it hasn’t been profitable, but Nguyen explains that his business is “operationally profitable.” He declined to share any revenue figures. A “strategic partnership” between Christina’s and Airbnb may also be in the works, as he says that he’s currently in discussions with the US startup.

Photo credit: Pixabay

Returnees like Nguyen are commonly called overseas Vietnamese, a term that refers to the more than 4 million Vietnamese living in diaspora all over the world, with the largest community based in the US. They include refugees who left at the end of the Vietnam War plus their descendants, economic migrants who left for work, and natural-born Vietnamese who go abroad to study and stay in those countries to work and live as permanent residents.

Eddie Thai, general partner at 500 Startups’ Vietnam-focused fund, says that repatriates have played a “major role” in the rise of the country’s economy, specifically as startup hubs, just like Chinese and Indians did in theirs.

“Overseas Vietnamese are a source of capital – through remittances and investment – but more importantly of knowledge, ideas, and connections,” Thai, an American who’s also of Vietnamese descent, tells Tech in Asia via email.

Leaving a mark

Re-investing in Vietnam

Returning home

Understanding the local market takes time