Green development and FPT Software: both actively defining the Vietnamese economy. We started our day with Professor Minh learning about Vietnam’s sustainability efforts and plans for future green development. Then we spent our afternoon with Phil, a business analyst at FPT software. Surprisingly, the two topics meshed well together, highlighting the economic trends driving Vietnam’s impressive growth.
Professor Minh started our day off with an eye opening summary of Hanoi’s toxic smog problem. The capital was voted the world’s most polluted city. The huge amount of motorbikes and gas-powered cars has created the unhealthy air quality in the city. Vietnam is also heavily reliant on coal power which will pose a challenging transitional period when trying to shift to sustainable energy sources. To combat some of the pollution, Vietnam is heavily investing in VinFast, an electric vehicle company. I’ll be interested to see how VinFast’s electric taxi fleet grows and if the company can flip to profitability in the coming years.
Like the green development initiatives, FPT Software is shaping the Vietnamese economy in the modern day. Our tour of FPT’s campus was incredible, the facility was littered with trees and even had a pickleball court. FPT seems to have mastered the balance of work hard, play hard. There were large halls full of employees hard at work together, but I saw many of them laughing together while doing so. I really enjoyed hearing about how FPT works with international clients. Since 1988, they’ve managed to command a dominant position in international software development market and it was super interesting to see part of that success.
It was a great day hearing and seeing the future of the Vietnamese economy and ecology. I’m looking forward to visiting Vina Capital tomorrow!