Granted a scholarship from a Japanese technology group when he was a second-year student at the University of Technology under the Hanoi National University, Duc left Hanoi for Tokyo to work as a software engineer soon after he graduated from the school.

Do Ba Duc

In the first three years, though proving his superior technical abilities to Japanese colleagues, Duc still found it difficult to find a common voice with colleagues because of language and cultural barriers.

This urged the young engineer to take more courageous steps to overcome the problem.

Do Ba Duc is a well-known name among the Vietnamese community in Japan. He is a computer science engineer with 12 years of experience who has been working for Japanese leading technology firms.

In 2010, Duc decided to move to Rakuten, a Japanese leading group, where he joined the development of Rakuten Ichiba, an e-commerce website.

As the leader of a development team with one technology patent, Duc was sent by the company to a training course in San Francisco. Later, he came back to lead the mobile software segment of the e-commerce department.

After five years of working for Rakuten, Duc moved to LINE, the company that owns a mobile chat app. Later, he was recruited by Softbank in a plan related to a $100 million joint venture with Alibaba of China.

At Softbank, he participated in many of the group’s investment projects in companies, such as Automation Anywhere, DiDi, WeWork, SenseTime, Zimperium, Dome9, Cohesity and Packet.

At present, Duc is a senior technology advisor for Japan Computer Vision (100 percent invested by Softbank) and market development advisor for Packet Host (a cloud computing company in the US which once received investment from Softbank).

Because of Duc’s great contribution, Softbank reserves the post of non-permanent technology advisor, one of the few exceptions at Softbank.

In 2017, Duc decided to set up Tokyo Techies, a firm on product development and technology education, focusing on complicated technologies such as AI, Robotics/IoT and Cyber Security with more than 30 engineers from eight countries.

The startup process in Japan as a foreigner was full of difficulties, but with continuous efforts, Duc and Tokyo Techies have gradually been recognized by customers and partners.

The company has more and more customers, including 40 businesses from Japan and the US and it provides many different technological products. It’s 900 technological trainees have finished training courses, and 25 scientific reports have been sent to international workshops.

Tokyo Techies is a Vietnamese-owned company, but has the service cost is far higher than the average level because it approaches difficult technologies.

Kim Chi 

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