“A Revolutionary Biotech Product: Proudly ‘Made by Vietnam’ and Ready to Take on the World.”

From an unknown brand, having to sell probiotics under a foreign partner’s brand when going abroad and unable to survive in the domestic market, LiveSpo has made a remarkable comeback.

Revolving around the story of bringing the brand back from the brink and rising strongly, LiveSpo’s CEO – Mr. Dang Quoc Hung, shared some surprising insights.

When it comes to LiveSpo, I’m very impressed with the image of your team selling probiotics and exporting entire containers to foreign partners. But in the beginning, you had to sell your “children” under someone else’s brand. Looking back at that time, what are your thoughts?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: It was indeed a struggle, but back then, we were desperate (laughs).

You know, in 2010, when Dr. Nguyen Hoa Anh (Chairman of LiveSpo Pharma and the inventor of the product) returned to Vietnam, everyone said he was crazy because of his idea of a future without antibiotics.

His product was good, but it couldn’t be sold domestically because people didn’t believe in it. In our country, when it comes to buying something related to health protection, many people tend to choose foreign products over local ones. This led to LiveSpo’s decision to “take our bell to a foreign land.”

Our approach was to sponsor international scientific conferences on microbiology and look for customers on the Alibaba e-commerce platform. The world was already aware of the benefits of probiotics and their use in daily life, so they were open to accepting a new product if it had good quality and pricing. Through Alibaba, they found LiveSpo and placed orders for OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) production, selling the product at about 90% of the price of a well-known French brand’s liquid probiotic.

To be honest, we felt very conflicted! We exported entire containers to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Peru, and other countries, but on the box, there was only a tiny line that said “Made in Vietnam” along with the factory name and address… But no matter what, when holding that finished product, we still felt proud that Vietnamese people had created something filled with our intellect, which could be tentatively called biotechnology. That’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? (laughs)

Now, LiveSpo has gone global with its own brand and is present in nearly 20 countries. However, we still maintain the OEM channel as a source of revenue and out of long-standing relationships with our customers.

You went abroad to come back stronger, and you entered the international market to return to developing the domestic market. That’s creative, but more importantly: how did you turn this challenging idea into reality?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: At first, despite limited finances, we still took our product to be presented at a conference on probiotics in Europe, specifically in the Czech Republic in 2019. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and attending international workshops became restricted. After the pandemic, we continued to participate in the International Microbiology Conference ASM (Washington DC, 2022), exhibited at the world-leading biotechnology breakthrough product exhibition Bio-Boston in the US in 2023, and recently attended the Vitafoods Europe International Nutrition and Food Exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2024.

That was LiveSpo’s path. We dared to go everywhere because we knew our product was extremely unique. The world is currently developing probiotics in the traditional realm, mainly in powder form. There’s a French company that makes liquid probiotics, but theirs is a single strain and low concentration. Probiotic spores in liquid form with multiple strains and high concentration are not available yet, especially “pre-activated” products that can be sprayed directly into the ears, nose, throat, and vagina, taking effect quickly within just 10-15 minutes… This is completely new.

In the pharmaceutical industry, you can’t just talk; you have to provide clinical evidence. For example, if you want to claim that your product can stop acute diarrhea within 30 minutes, you must have a basis and continuously test it for 5 to 7 years, then publish the clinical research in international scientific journals.

I believe very few companies can do what LiveSpo has done. That is, throughout the product development process, we followed international standards: registering clinical trials according to US standards; participating in international scientific conferences; then publishing the clinical research results in top scientific journals, such as Nature Scientific Reports; and finally, attending exhibitions for new and breakthrough products worldwide.

I remember that initially, Dr. Hoa Anh was struggling with sales. Witnessing such a good product not being trusted, I thought I had to do something to make people know, understand, and believe in it.

At first, Dr. Hoa Anh didn’t believe in my path, so I had to convince him by setting a condition: If I can sell 20,000 products (about half a container) within a year, he must agree to give me exclusive rights.

I established five companies simultaneously, each group specializing in a different aspect, and we simultaneously covered the market. We used Facebook as our primary tool and focused our finances on marketing. When I met Dr. Hoa Anh in 2016, it took more than a year of preparation, from unifying the product name to designing the packaging… We started selling at the beginning of 2018, and within just six months, we achieved our plan.

Later, when we had some brand recognition in the international market, we returned to the domestic market and continued to expand globally with a different mindset.

Currently, the domestic pharmaceutical market sees strong participation from pharmacy chains. How did you convince these chains when you returned to the domestic market?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: To be included in these pharmacy chains, it’s a given that we must have appropriate discount policies, along with complete certifications for quality and legality. To maintain their image, they prefer to collaborate with professional suppliers who have products with internationally recognized clinical trials and know how to market them.

Getting into these pharmacy chains was not easy for us. For example, when we first started, one pharmacy chain requested co-branding and deep discounts. Another chain wanted to cooperate on a small scale for an entire year as a trial. Yet another chain gave us deep discounts, but our products still didn’t sell well because the key is that we must sell together with them. Fortunately, LiveSpo eventually found a way to sell effectively with them and has since expanded our cooperation, now on fair terms with these pharmacy chains.

In business, people think that having a product is everything, but even if the product is good or unique, the effort put into marketing and distribution is enormous. For a product to have a place in the market, the people in charge of distribution and marketing must have ambition, strategy, and passion.

What about the traditional OTC channel?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: In our strategy, we always respect the traditional pharmacies across the country.

In the initial phase, we developed partnerships with over 2.000 pharmacies selling our products. However, after developing multiple channels, many pharmacies tended to only sell products that were exclusively distributed through the traditional pharmacy channel.

During that phase, we faced a difficult decision: to continue or stop this channel because everything was too stressful. We had a large team of nearly 100 sales representatives, but they were only used to the company running TV commercials, while they just delivered the goods. If this continued, the company would eventually fail due to losses, so we might as well stop.

But we understood that without the OTC channel, there would still be a significant gap in our goal to conquer the domestic market. So, LiveSpo started with a new strategy to directly address these challenges.

The sales team had to learn three things: first, understand that “selling” doesn’t just mean “delivering goods”; second, know how to coordinate marketing efforts and work together with pharmacies; and third, be able to provide product knowledge training to pharmacies. This seemingly simple task wasn’t easy. It took more than six months, but eventually, everything changed.

Now, the OTC channel has achieved certain successes, with an increasing number of partner pharmacies and growing sales.

Now, LiveSpo has established a certain position in the domestic market, but I know that many doctors still express skepticism when mentioning this brand.

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: I think the doctors’ skepticism is understandable. They want to provide the best for their patients based on their knowledge. That’s partly why LiveSpo needed to build its brand globally and then return to convince Vietnamese doctors.

In fact, when Mekong Capital invested in LiveSpo they wanted to verify our claims, so they independently sent our product to Eurofins in Germany – a world-leading laboratory in the field of testing and analysis. The results showed that some of LiveSpo’s quality indicators exceeded those of a well-known French probiotic product. Thanks to this, Mekong Capital quickly decided to invest.

To convince doctors, we can only strive to create the best product along with internationally recognized clinical trials published in top scientific journals. We can’t convince them by saying, “Doctor, our product is really, really good; please believe me.”

But specifically, when meeting with doctors, what do you say to convince them?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: Initially, we could only approach them outside the hospitals to hold scientific workshops.

Now, LiveSpo has established close collaborations with many major institutes such as the Central Pediatric Hospital, Thai Nguyen General Hospital, and some other hospitals… We will also be partnering with more large hospitals soon.

To answer your question in detail, let me share a story. When COVID-19 broke out, we had scientific grounds to show that LiveSpo NAVAX probiotic spores nasal spray could help prevent and treat this disease. At that time, many people were skeptical because they thought probiotics were only for the digestive system, and no one knew about nasal sprays for the ears, nose, and throat. Some even said to us, “Do you want people to sniff something meant for the digestive system?”

However, after we published two consecutive articles in the world-renowned scientific journal Nature Scientific Reports in 2022 and 2023, everything changed dramatically. Recently, we had booths at two major conferences specializing in respiratory medicine, one in the North and one in the South, each attracting about 1,100-1,200 doctors, and all of them were receptive. The doctors respected and were eager to hear more about our research, and they were thrilled to discover that the authors of these studies were Vietnamese, including some of their respected colleagues.