As a market of 100 million people with high smart phone penetration and high connectivity, Vietnam offers a lot of potential for tech startups according to Google’ CEO Sundar Pichai.

At the December 22 meeting with developers and entrepreneurs of Vietnamese startups in Hanoi during his two-day visit to Vietnam, Pichai pointed out the many advantages that Vietnam provides that would make it the perfect launching pad for companies to be successful not only locally but also globally.

According to Pichai, Vietnamese companies can have the confidence of starting in such a big local market and then they can build strength and take it outside.

“Over time a generation of people gain confidence because they have a big market to serve so they can start thinking bigger and that will help them succeed in a global scale,” he said, adding that he saw a lot of energy and optimism in Vietnam, and that there is a culture of entrepreneurs here.

Pichai said Google was looking for more opportunities to cooperate with tech startups in Vietnam, and that one of the reasons that he came here was to figure out a way so that the two sides could work together better. 

On the same day, Pichai met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who said the Vietnamese government supported the development of information technology (IT) and continued to enable big global IT companies, including Google, to expand operations in Vietnam, and expressed his hope that the company was going to increase cooperation with Vietnamese companies.

Pichai in turn reaffirmed Vietnam’s big potential in developing IT and said that with Vietnam’s signing of the free trade agreement with the European Union and the country’s up-coming joining of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Google would have many opportunities to expand operations in Vietnam.

Specifically, Google is going to have some projects such as training about 1,400 engineers and IT experts from Vietnam, promoting tourism in Vietnam, helping small and medium enterprises to sell their products globally using ecommerce and some education projects.