The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee and the Finnish Embassy in Vietnam launched the Ho Chi Minh City Innovation, Startup, and Entrepreneurship Week 2018 (WHISE 2018), the city’s largest event in innovation, science-technology, and startups, on October 18. 

At the event 

The event aims to introduce successful startup models and pool social resources both at home and abroad to promote startups, towards building an innovative startup community. 

Speaking at the event, Permanent Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Thanh Liem said the city has set a sustainable economic development model driven by intellectual economy and green growth. 

In an effort to turn the city into a smart urban area for 2017-2020 and build an innovation eco-system in the east covering Districts 2, 9, and Thu Duc, a number of programmes and action plans have been issued with specific measures, including a startup promotion plan, a cooperation plan with the Israel Innovation Authority, and a project to support small- and medium-sized enterprises. 

Over the past few years, the city has held forums connecting domestic and foreign startups; seminars on smart city development, e-government, and big data; and working sessions with local business associations to try remove barriers in their way. 

It also actively joined the Vietnam-Finland Innovation Partnership Programme and the Vietnam Silicon Valley programme, inviting experts from the US, Japan and Israel to the effort. 

Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs Mika Lintila hailed Vietnam as one of the most important trade partners of Finland in Southeast Asia. 

He said he is accompanied by a delegation of Finnish businesses to promote bilateral trade and investment, as well as seek new partners and boost ties with the Vietnamese Government, organisations and enterprises. 

Lintila said Finland focuses on bio-economy, clean technology and digitalisation, adding that the country was also named among the most innovative in Europe on World Economic Forum rankings, and as such Vietnam will certainly take home some benefits from joint projects. 

During the two-day WHISE, seminars on innovation, education, data, and financial technology were also held by the Finnish embassy, as well as the I-Star 2018 awards for creativity and business startups, a photo exhibition on creative children, and a display of technological products by startup firms.–VNA