Nguyen Hoa Binh is a widely recognized businessman after becoming a “shark” on the investment board of the show Shark Tank Vietnam. He is the Founder and Chairman of NextTech Group, one of the first IT companies in Vietnam operating in the field of trade electronization.
Shark Binh started his business at an early age, right from the time he was a sophomore at Hanoi University of Technology – Hanoi National University. Recalling that period, he once called it the “three-no” start-up time: no capital, no office and facilities, no employees.
In the program “Start-up Journey” of VTVMoney recently shared by the Shark Tank Vietnam fanpage, Ms. Pham Thi Kim Hoa – Shark Binh’s mother recounted that the passion for IT of the NextTech CEO was nurtured since high school and also encountered a series of obstacles right from the start.
“Binh started learning programming in high school. Nowadays, it’s rare to see anyone like me in the past. I sold two plots of land to buy a computer for my son.
One day I went to a bookstore in Ha Dong town to buy my son a copy of Basic Programming. The seller said that Binh had asked her to reserve the book for him, and that he saved his breakfast money to buy it because he didn’t dare to ask his mother.
On my birthday, I asked him what he wanted to buy, Binh also asked me to take him to the University of Science to buy some programming books. He was always passionate like that, cherishing it since high school. I also found it strange, but let him dream“, Shark Binh’s mother shared.
“One day Binh was busy programming until 12:30 AM, his father urged him to turn it off but couldn’t, so he pulled the plug. The next morning Binh complained to his mother that he had finished coding but didn’t have time to save it before his father unplugged it, ruining everything“, she recounted another memory.
Shark Binh as a student.
The first time Shark Binh earned money was thanks to a contract to build a management software system worth 2 million VND.
“At that time, I thought that if I started a business now, if I succeeded I would have my own career after graduating, if I failed I would gain a lot of experience. So, I decided to use the 2 million VND I earned from writing custom software to start a business“, the Chairman of NextTech recalled.
The company he founded at that time was PeaceSoft, the predecessor of the NextTech Group today. By maintaining PeaceSoft’s operation for 3 years, Shark Binh had a source of funds to “use short to feed long”, and then reinvested in the chodientu.vn project. Although the online sales model was quite familiar to other countries at that time, the website was not well received in Vietnam.
“When I went to talk to businesses, inviting them to sell online, they looked at me like an alien. Their catchphrase was: “If you guys do everything from A to Z for free, then I’ll do it. I’m very busy with my store””.
Faced with that difficulty, I imagined myself as an ant trying to move a rock – that was the inertia and habits of society. If there is no ant colony, I have to think of a smarter way“, said Shark Binh.
After many years of operation, PeaceSoft was restructured and renamed NextTech. In addition to the Vietnamese market, NextTech has now developed dozens of branches with hundreds of employees in different countries and territories such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, China.
NextTech currently has more than 20 technology platforms operating in 4 main areas: E-commerce, Fintech, E-logistics, and Start-up Venture.
