by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Founders & Conglomerates
⚡ TL;DRTrương Gia Bình was a Moscow-trained physicist who founded FPT in 1988 with twelve fellow scientists and a mandate to earn hard currency for a research institute. The company began by bartering computers and food with the Soviet Union, became Vietnam’s...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Founders & Conglomerates
⚡ TL;DRTrần Bá Dương started as a mechanic in a state vehicle-repair plant and built Thaco into Vietnam’s largest private industrial group. From a truck workshop founded in 1997, he moved to the empty Chu Lai economic zone in 2003 and turned it into a complex of...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Founders & Conglomerates
⚡ TL;DRNguyễn Thị Phương Thảo built Vietnam’s largest domestic airline and one of its biggest private banks from a trading fortune made in Moscow before she was twenty-five. Vietjet, launched in 2011, overtook the flag carrier on domestic routes within six years...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Founders & Conglomerates
⚡ TL;DRPhạm Nhật Vượng built Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate out of a noodle factory in Ukraine, a resort island in Nha Trang and a shopping tower in Hanoi. Vingroup, the group he controls, has moved through resorts, malls, apartments, hospitals, schools,...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Tourism, Aviation & Hospitality
⚡ TL;DRLong Thành International Airport, 40 kilometres east of Hồ Chí Minh City, was first sketched in the late 1990s, approved by the National Assembly in 2015 and finally broke ground in January 2021. Its first phase, one runway, one terminal and capacity for 25...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Tourism, Aviation & Hospitality
⚡ TL;DRPhú Quốc was a fishing island of 100,000 people with a dirt airstrip in 2010. By 2025 it received on the order of six million visitors a year, hosted the region’s longest sea-crossing cable car, a Bill Bensley-designed JW Marriott and an entire themed...
