The national festival for innovative startups, TECHFEST VIETNAM 2020, will be held from November 26-29 in Ha Noi.

This is the largest annual virtual event organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam (MOST) to cooperate with international partners to develop and promote science, technology, and innovation in Vietnam in particular and South East Asia in general.

Taking place amid the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, TECHFEST shows an emerging nation eager to display the dynamism of the Vietnamese start-up ecosystem among investors/investment funds, enterprises, and experts worldwide via virtual events on techfest.vn.

Themed ‘Respond – Transform — Break through’, TECHFEST VIETNAM 2020 will be structured into 12 technology villages: (1) Medical Technology (2) Agricultural Technology (3) Educational Technology (4) Tourism and F&B Technology (5) Frontier Technology (6) Financial Technology (7) Smart Cities (8) Social Impact (9) Student Start-ups (10) Local Start-ups (11) Community (12) International village, with 250 potential start-ups booths, attracting nearly 200 investors, 150 corporations, enterprises and business accelerators virtually and physically.

Notably, social impacts on innovative start-up solutions and business models will be presented in the Social Impact Technology Village by UNDP Vietnam and WWF Vietnam. MOST will work with partners to organize a High-Level Policy Dialogue, in which Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will hold a discussion with the innovative start-up community on solving difficulties in conducting business and creating a favourable environment for start-up to grow.

After six years of implementation, local TECHFEST events have been organized in 15 provinces; the national TECHFEST VIETNAM has attracted around 30,000 people, of which international experts and investors accounted for more than 40%. In 2019, TECHFEST was held on an international scale for the first time in three developed startup-up ecosystems: the United States, South Korea, and Singapore, facilitating 20 prominent Vietnamese start-ups to access the global market and connecting over 100 international investors to the Vietnamese start-up ecosystem. In sum, there are about 500 local and international investors with approximately 700 investment with total value up to US$20 million. Among the startups connected, Abivin, the champion of TECHFEST 2019, was chosen to participate in the competition and then won in the international arena called Startup World Cup 2018.