Overseas Vietnamese critical role in the New Econo

Overseas Vietnamese may play a critical role in developing the New Economy in their homeland as well as helping entrepreneurs in the U.S.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Dan Biers/SILICON VALLEY and Margot Cohen/HO CHI MINH CITY



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A FASHIONABLE RESTAURANT near Stanford University is awash with venture capitalists and twenty-something CEOs chatting between sips of champagne. It's a typical power-networking scene from the heart of Silicon Valley with one important distinction: Many of the participants are Vietnamese-Americans, who for the first time are coming together to see how they can help one another.

This party for the small but growing community of hi-tech Vietnamese entrepreneurs is of more than passing significance to their homeland half a world away. Many of them fled Vietnam as small children on rickety boats more than two decades ago. Now, Vietnam sees its nascent information-technology industry as one way to help invigorate a still sputtering economy, and it's looking for a hand from the Overseas Vietnamese, particularly those who are beginning to make their mark in Silicon Valley.

Some in the crowd have already set up operations back in Vietnam. Others are thinking about it. Minh Le, the president of a management-training organization in Silicon Valley who advises several local Vietnamese entrepreneurs, says the acute IT labour shortage in the United States will cause many to tap the workforce back home for outsourced projects. "It's very easy for them to say, 'Hey, wait a minute, what about Vietnam? I know how to work with these people. I know what they're like. I know how to motivate them,'" he says.

Until now, the greatest economic contribution of Overseas Vietnamese, or Viet Kieu, to the motherland has been in the form of remittances to relatives. Last year alone they sent $1.2 billion via banks and an estimated $2 billion more through friends returning with cash-stuffed suitcases.

RISING NUMBERS
In recent years, Overseas Vietnamese have been making direct investments as well. Since 1996, they have formally established 430 domestic companies with registered capital of 490 billion dong ($35 million), but only about 10% of those have been in information technology.

That low proportion partly reflects the risk-aversion of the Vietnamese who fled war and famine. Only those who spent their childhood in the U.S. have been willing to take a chance in hyper-competitive technology industries, both in the U.S. and Vietnam--often against their parents' wish that they enter more stable professions such as law and medicine. Le reckons there are now about 15 CEOs among the estimated 10,000 Vietnamese working in Silicon Valley's IT industry. He says the number is growing fast, but it's still tiny compared with the number of Chinese and Indian businessmen who are founding companies in the Valley.

Other factors that have kept IT investment low at home include a corrupt bureaucracy, high taxes and miserable telecommunications infrastructure--Internet access is limited and expensive (see article overleaf). Fluency in English, the language of international business and technology, is poor compared with other countries with hi-tech aspirations such as India and the Philippines. Businessmen also are wary that any ventures back home could leave them open to criticism from other Overseas Vietnamese of collaborating with a communist government that's still reviled by many.

Those problems could yet stifle Vietnam's IT industry, which ranges from software development to designing Web pages, before it gets off the ground. Yet other factors are proving to be powerful magnets for Viet Kieu investment. There's the desire to help one's homeland, not to mention a smart and low-cost workforce. "There's a sense of giving something back," says Vu Lam, one of five Vietnamese founders of Paragon Solutions, a company in suburban Atlanta that develops software for the Internet. And, he adds, "we're very happy with the quality of the people we're getting."

Paragon employs 150 people in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi--about two-thirds of its total workforce--and hopes to expand to 500 by the end of next year. In ad***ion to creating relatively high-paying jobs, the company also is bringing a bit of the U.S. business mindset to Vietnam. For example, Paragon's management is encouraging the workers to ask questions to better understand the needs of clients. The company also brings its Vietnamese engineers to the U.S. for technical training, English lessons and a sampling of the U.S. way of life--field trips are organized to cultural hot spots such as the Coca-Cola museum and Disney World.

Among the more recent Viet Kieu entrepreneurs to touch down in Vietnam is Michael Han, the energetic 26-year-old CEO of Silicon Valley-based GoLinQ.com, whose product helps small businesses develop e-commerce (see article on page 48). During a whirlwind August visit to his company's operations in Ho Chi Minh City--two rooms at a computer school with cheap, filmy green curtains over the windows--he enthused about the Vietnamese staff. "The first time I gave them a project, two weeks later they gave a result. It was outstanding."

MAKING THE BREAK
Han now employs 15 full-time programmers in Vietnam, including a 36-year-old art-school graduate who designs Web sites. "I'm trying to find out where their strength is. They are doing some easier projects in graphic interfaces. As we build their knowledge, I'll get into harder projects," Han says.

Three weeks later, Han is back in Silicon Valley, furiously networking at the restaurant--the get-together has been arranged by two prominent local Vietnamese, a lawyer and successful hi-tech entrepreneur. He spends part of the evening trading notes with Steve Tran, who has raised nearly $50 million for his Santa Clara-based start-up BeVocal, which provides technology to access the Internet by voice. Tran had considered outsourcing some work to India, but after talking with Han he's thinking about Vietnam as well. "I didn't realize it was possible," says the intense Tran, who has been back to his homeland just once since he fled 25 years ago at the age of four. "But it sounds like it's possible and practical."

The Vietnamese government is trying to make it even more practical with newly announced tax breaks; more education and training to expand an IT workforce that now includes about 20,000 people; and a promise to establish hi-tech industrial parks with direct and competitively priced connections to the Internet.

In announcing its plans to further develop the software industry, which officials hope can earn $300 million through exports and $200 million through domestic products and services by 2005, the government has explicitly noted the critical role Overseas Vietnamese could play. And it's actively reaching out--witness the first hi-tech meeting between government officials and Overseas Vietnamese at a July seminar in New York.

Nguyen Thanh Nam, a software director for Hanoi-based FPT, an Internet service provider and software designer, reckons that Overseas Vietnamese, with their resources and market savvy, will dominate the industry for the next few years. After that, he argues, domestic companies--there are roughly 60 local firms in software development--are likely to take the lead because of their better grasp of local business con***ions.

But even then, Nam and other local players realize that their overseas brethren can provide an essential link to the global market. For example, FPT in January opened a sales office in San Jose, California, staffed with two Overseas Vietnamese.

"They can help us in connecting American firms with Vietnamese firms," says Ha The Minh, president of Hanoi-based CMC Computer Communication. "We Vietnamese don't have much idea about the American market. We don't have connections, and we're not familiar with international marketing and financing." All the more reason to expect the overseas crowd will be crucial to Vietnam's bid to grab a juicier piece of the global IT industry.



Được sửa chữa bởi - despi on 22/12/2001 07:28