Ho Chi Minh City’s authorities have just approved the plan “Supporting Innovative Startup Ecosystem 2021-2025” to further encourage startup activities in the city, with a view to supporting up to four thousand start-ups.

The 2019 HCMC Innovation, Startup and Entrepreneurship Week. Photo: Trung Kien

The plan sets the target of putting the city’s innovative start-up ecosystem on par with the region, gradually becoming a cornerstone of star-up activities and helping businesses improve productivity and sharpen their competitive edge.

It also aims to develop a spearhead product of the southern hub, raising the rate of total factor productivity to 45-50% of its gross regional domestic product (GRDP).

Through the plan, Ho Chi Minh city strives to, by the end of 2025, support the improvement of innovation capacity for around 3,000 businesses, incubate and develop 1,000 innovative start-up projects and develop 100 innovative start-ups to access sources of investment capital.

The municipal People’s Committee has devised seven major tasks to meet such goals which includes developing infrastructure and supporting services for innovative startup ecosystem, improving capacity of members in innovative startup ecosystems, forming an innovative startup ecosystem for each industry and cutting-edge product, supporting innovative startup entrepreneurs to develop their own products and seek potential markets, assisting small- and middle-scaled businesses to upgrade their performance and product quality, promoting innovative activities in the public sector, and boosting international cooperation and raising awareness on innovative startup in the society.

Within the plan, a number of projects will be executed, including a project on building a network of Innovative Entrepreneurship Centers, another on supporting the development of infrastructure and technology for innovative startups as well as one on building organization models to support innovative startups in accordance with international standards.

Being the hometown of nearly 50% of startups in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City has always tried to promote innovative startup activities in the community via appropriate policies and projects.

So far, Ho Chi Minh City has introduced several advantageous policies regarding innovative startup in order to boost the growth of the startup ecosystem here, aiming at becoming the base for the national startup community.