Finals Of DAV Startup Contest – Innovation For Success 2021

DAV Startup 2021 is a startup competition organized by the Faculty of International Economics in collaboration with the Training Department, Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, to solve problems around life by proposing innovative startup projects. The first year of launching with the theme towards 17 sustainable development goals set by the United Nations by 2030, the DAV Startup - Innovation for Success 2021 competition creates an environment and motivation for students to self-educate, train and cultivate ideas, equip basic knowledge to start a business, and help connect students with small and large businesses across the country, creating conditions for their career orientation.

After nearly 2 months with 3 rounds of competition, the TOP 5 best teams were revealed to compete together in the final night of DAV Startup 2021. They are: G2D, Zootopia, CRAVI, SHALO and TLC.

 

Attending the Finals, on the Academy's side, were Dr. Pham Lan Dung - Acting Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam; Dr. Nguyen Thi Thin - Acting Head of the Training Department; Associate Professor. Dr. Dang Hoang Linh - Head of the Faculty of International Economics, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Head of the competition organizing commitee; Dr. Lam Thanh Ha - Deputy Head of the Faculty of International Economics, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

The delegates included Ms. Bui Kim Thuy, Senior Representative in Vietnam of the US-ASEAN Business Council (USABC); Associate Professor. Dr. Do Huong Lan, Deputy Director of the Center for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, National Economics University; Director Viet Tu, Founder of Dream Studio and Viet Theater.

On the sponsors’ side were Mr. Luong Huu Lam, Deputy General Director of Giovanni Group Joint Stock Company; Ms. Nguyen Thi Minh Hang, Chairwoman of MH Group Joint Stock Company; Ms. Dang Thi Lan, Deputy Director of Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam(BIDV) of the Dong Da branch. In particular, the Gold sponsors of the Competition include: Giovanni Group Joint Stock Company, MH Group Joint Stock Company, silver sponsors include Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development BIDV, Sapo Bakery and BestB Group.

In her opening speech for the Finals, Dr. Pham Lan Dung - Acting Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam - shared about the meaning and purpose of the competition. With the spirit that every competition is a lesson, she believes that no matter what the results of the Finals are, what you will receive will still be knowledge, experience and an opportunity to get your startup project closer to success.

At the Finals, 5 teams excelled in clarifying their ideas, the projects still retained their creative spirit and aimed at extremely practical goals in life.

G2D wishes to establish the Old Book New Life project to help students easily access original textbooks at low cost, helping students save part of their budget for their family. OBNL is an old textbook library website, through buying, selling and renting textbooks to increase the life cycle and value of the books, while contributing to raising awareness of intellectual property and respect for one's own intelligence. The team excellently won the highest award of the competition.

Realizing that unsustainable shopping is a hot topic as this habit leads to a more aching problem that is environmental pollution caused by the fashion industry, Zootopia offers a product that is a solution to this problem: An application for buying, selling and trading used fashion – StyleSwap. The team's project targets goal number 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals - "Responsible consumption and production". With their project, the group won the Second Prize of the competition.

Realizing that young people are lacking practice, as well as time to interact outside, Cravi wants to create a playground where they can meet, work with peers, mentors and directly participate in solving craft village problems through experiencing cohabitation as craft village residents, solving problems that craft villages are facing, amazing race adventure journey, volunteer activities, environment and art. The team excellently won the Third Prize of the competition.

Starting to build the idea from the desire to effectively solve the amount of wasted leftover food in Vietnam, SHALO together created the project "NO LEFTOVERS", with the task of collecting, preserving, and processing leftover food at restaurants and hotels and distributes dishes to buyers through the unique Food Truck model. With his idea, SHALO successfully won the Breakthrough Idea Award of the competition.

With the mission of helping boys have healthy skin and be more confident in their appearance - breaking social stereotypes about men's skin care, SuperCaring - TLC's project creates easy access for them in a community of people with common interests, and set a long-term goal of owning a chain of retail stores for skin and body care products for men. The group won the competition's Inspiration Award.

At the end of each team's presentation, they received extremely useful advice, comments and constructive questions from the members of the jury.

Based on the judges' scores, awards were given to deserving teams. With its creative and potential project, the winner of the first DAV Startup season officially named the G2D team. Along with that, the Second Prize, Third Prize, Inspiration Prize and Breakthrough Idea Prize were named the teams Zootopia, CRAVI, TLC and SHALO respectively.

The finals of the DAV Startup contest - Innovation for success took place successfully. With the foundation built throughout the competition, the teams' startup projects will certainly achieve much success when implemented in practice. DAV Startup - Innovation for success promises to continue to be a useful playground to help students get closer to their passion for startup in the future.