Vietnam’s digital economic system is quickly increasing, reaching a worth of US$30 billion in 2023 and projected to extend by 20% to hit US$43 billion by 2025.
This development is fueled by expertise adoption throughout companies, the rise of key sectors together with fintech, in addition to rising middle-class incomes, a brand new report by Acclime Vietnam, knowledgeable providers supplier from Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, says.
Launched in September 2024 and supported of Singapore’s United Abroad Financial institution (UOB), the report explores the transformation of Vietnam’s digital economic system, highlighting the important thing drivers propelling the sector’s development and the rising developments shaping the business.
Vietnamese companies embrace expertise
The report notes that Vietnam has undergone technological transformation over the previous years, with its younger inhabitants rapidly adopting cellular Web providers. Companies too are embracing digital transformation at a quick tempo, digitalizing knowledge, standardizing their processes, and incorporating new applied sciences.
A 2023 survey of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Funding (MPI) discovered enhancements in digital transformation readiness throughout all sectors, with scores rising by 0.7 to 1.4 factors from 2022 to 2023.
UOB Vietnam’s research additionally highlights this development, with 87% of the 525 companies surveyed adopting digitalization of their enterprise. Moreover, over 8 in 10 companies in Vietnam stated they had been planning to spend extra on their digitalization efforts in 2024, with most budgeting a rise of 10% to 25%.
GenAI, sustainability as rising developments
Inside Vietnam’s burgeoning digital economic system, a number of developments are rising. Most significantly, generative synthetic intelligence (genAI), which confer with AI techniques that may generate new content material corresponding to textual content, pictures or audio, is gaining important traction.
A 2023 Finastra survey discovered that Vietnamese monetary establishments are main genAI adoption globally. 40% of Vietnamese respondents polled stated their organizations had both rolled out or improved their capabilities in pure language processing (NPL) together with genAI, the very best charge amongst all of the markets studied and forward of Saudi Arabia (39%), the US (24%) and the UK (24%).
A outstanding 91% of decision-makers at monetary establishments in Vietnam stated they had been both adopting or open to adopting genAI. These leaders expressed curiosity in utilizing the expertise for numerous purposes, together with enhancing customer support, bettering IT operations, in addition to accumulating, processing, and analyzing knowledge for environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards classifications, with 45%, 44%, and 44% of respondents prioritizing these areas, respectively.
Sustainability is one other rising development in Vietnam with each buyers and clients more and more integrating ESG elements into their decision-making processes. Moreover, sensible industrial parks, which leverage superior digital applied sciences and sustainable practices to boost effectivity, productiveness, and environmental efficiency, have gotten extra prevalent, pushed by supportive development insurance policies.
Based on a report from the MPI, Vietnam is now residence to 416 industrial parks and greater than 1,000 industrial clusters, contributing to round half of the nation’s export turnover.
Progress drivers boosting Vietnam’s digital economic system
Vietnam’s digital transformation is supported by a lot of elements. For one, the nation is residence to a burgeoning startup ecosystem which now contains about 3,800 ventures, in response to the Ministry of Science and Expertise.
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digitalization by pushing Vietnamese shoppers to embrace e-commerce platforms, digital monetary providers, on-line training, and distant work. This introduced new alternatives for quite a few companies and prompted them to speed up digital transformation initiatives.
As well as, the rise in middle-class spending energy has launched alternatives inside Vietnam’s digital economic system, heightening demand for info and communications expertise (ICT) merchandise, digital tourism, and providers delivered through digital platforms.
Lastly, the federal government can also be actively selling the expansion of the digital economic system. In 2019, the Nationwide Innovation Heart (NIC) was established in 2019 to help modern startups and digital entrepreneurs, specializing in industries corresponding to sensible manufacturing, sensible cities, cybersecurity and semiconductors. A 12 months later, the federal government permitted the Nationwide Digital Transformation Programme by 2025, aiming to rework Vietnam right into a digital economic system, society, and authorities, and have the digital economic system account for 30% of general gross home product (GDP) by 2030.
Fintech development
Lastly, the Acclime Vietnam report highlights fintech as a distinguished startup section within the nation. The sector is at present dominated by funds and cellular wallets. Vietnam had 32.77 million lively e-wallets by the tip of 2023, with cost transactions through Web and cellular channels rising by 52% and 103.3%, respectively, yearly from 2021 to 2023.
The expansion of fintech in Vietnam has been pushed by booming funding exercise. The Vietnam Innovation and Tech Funding Report 2024 estimates that from 2013 to 2023, a considerable US$1.04 billion was invested in cost fintech startups in Vietnam, alongside US$495 million directed in the direction of monetary providers, underscoring the rising dynamism of the fintech business in Vietnam.
Simply final month, non-public fairness agency NextBold Capital introduced that it was trying to increase a US$100 million fund to again SMEs in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The fund will goal companies throughout training, healthcare, shopper items, expertise, and agribusiness, additional contributing to the expansion of Vietnam’s tech sector.
Featured picture credit score: edited from pexels
