VIETNAMESE STARTUP AIMS TO RAISE TENS OF MILLIONS OF USD WITH A “DISRUPTOR” APPROACH

“We want to become the “disruptor” in the competitive SaaS market. We want to target customers who are looking for new experiences, increasing user self-service capabilities

Starting from scratch to the day the 1Office all-in-one enterprise management platform was valued at tens of millions of USD by Mynavi – Japan’s leading HR group, has been a journey of passion and perseverance for Mr. Le Viet Thang – Founder and CEO of 1Office Joint Stock Company.

“About 15-16 years ago, the Vietnamese market only had a few scattered document management solutions like Bkav’s eOffice, with almost no internal enterprise management software that fully supported activities like HR management, sales, etc. Back then, I was a Math major at the University of Science and Technology. When I heard my professors use eOffice as an example for the Database course, I felt its features were too limited to solve the ‘problems’ businesses faced. The enterprise management software market was still a ‘blue ocean’ with plenty of ‘room to play’ for me. Therefore, some friends and I decided to apply mathematical theories combined with Information Technology to real-world applications, building an operational management system to help businesses optimize costs and increase productivity. From the very beginning of my startup journey, I knew I wanted to create software solutions for enterprises,” the CEO, born in 1983, recounted.

The predecessor of 1Office was Digital Optimization Solution – DOS.

To survive, Mr. Thang and his associates had to manage in various ways, such as building websites and implementing “tailor-made” software solutions for real estate platforms…

With capital nearly depleted, Mr. Thang met with Vat Gia CEO Nguyen Ngoc Diep and proposed the idea of creating an internal management system for Vat Gia, focusing mainly on human resource management. The first lines of code for the 1Office software were written.

Seeing that the software for Vat Gia “ran smoothly,” Mr. Thang and Mr. Diep formed a joint venture to sell the internal solution. However, it failed because a “tailor-made” solution for one business could not meet the diverse needs of many others.

In 2015, Mr. Thang went out on his own, establishing 1Office Joint Stock Company, and persistently sought customers and revenue.

“I called Mr. Vu, the General Director of Media Mart, and then went to demo the software solution in person. Mr. Vu showed me the screen interface of Thế giới di động’s ERP solution and asked, ‘Can you do something like this?’. I confidently replied, ‘We can do even better.’ Media Mart became our next customer,” Mr. Thang recalled.

After that, 1Office gradually won over many large clients such as Bia Đại Việt, Canifa, and Hòa Phát, helping these enterprises solve existing challenges in the market.

For Media Mart, the challenge was to connect the timekeeping systems for about 200 points of sale from Quang Binh province northwards. The head of 1Office had to use his own money to buy the manufacturer’s SDK library to build a tool that could connect all time clocks on the market.

To solve Canifa’s challenge, where each store had a different payroll, the 1Office team built a system that allowed users to input Excel commands and customize timekeeping and payroll formulas directly within the software.

“It was our customers’ requests that helped us accumulate the knowledge and experience to perfect the 1Office All-in-One Business Management Platform, which is capable of helping businesses optimize operations in management, HR, sales, finance, and accounting… The commercial version of 1Office, running on the Cloud, officially launched in 2017 and quickly became one of the top business software solutions in Vietnam,” said the 1Office CEO, highly appreciating the role of his customers.

Looking back on the rather arduous startup journey, during which the “boss” many times had to pawn his vehicle and borrow money to pay employee salaries, Mr. Thang reflected pensively: “Hardship is a part of the startup journey. Whenever I faced difficulties, I always asked myself: Why did I start doing this? And the reasons to keep going always outnumbered the reasons to stop. I remained steadfast on the path I had chosen, continuing to pursue the work I believed I could do best. Perhaps every startup must go through hardship before achieving success. If there were no challenges or difficulties, perhaps there would be nothing interesting left to do.”

For CEO Le Viet Thang, R&D (research and development) is 1Office’s top priority for creating a competitive advantage in the market.

1Office’s BA (Business Analyst) team regularly researches the products of domestic and international competitors and studies user behavior to propose new features.

In addition, 1Office has a very special R&D team: its more than 6,000 customers with about 500,000 users, who can submit bug reports, request feature improvements, and suggest new feature developments through the system at any time. The deep and continuous experiences of customers and users help the 1Office Platform become increasingly streamlined, smooth, and excellent. No expert can match the R&D capability of this “power of the crowd.”

The 1Office CEO himself is relentlessly passionate about technology. “I’m more of a ‘sly fox’ now than before, but I still want to retain a bit of ‘naivety and foolishness’ when creating products to achieve breakthroughs and different ways of thinking, thereby creating interesting things. As Steve Jobs said, in business you have to be ‘hungry,’ but in product development, you have to be a little ‘foolish.’ Just ignore many rational constraints, close your eyes and imagine unconventional features, and sometimes you get better results,” Mr. Thang said with a smile.

Mr. Thang cited the BPA (Business Process Automation) module in the 1Office Total Business Management Platform as proof of creativity, breakthrough, and daring to do what others have not.

There are quite a few RPA (Robotic Process Automation) solutions on the market, but each solution usually only performs single, isolated tasks, such as data entry or creating sales scripts.

Meanwhile, 1Office’s BPA can automate entire business processes, integrating tools to address the challenge of business management in a comprehensive yet streamlined manner. For example, it can embed sales scripts into the order processing stage or financial and accounting operations…

“Among 1Office’s more than 6,000 customers (nearly 20% of whom are FDI enterprises and foreign companies operating in Vietnam), up to 80% are using the BPA module. Specifically in the business process automation segment, we have an advantage in technological features compared to competitors in the international market, not just in Vietnam. I want 1Office to become a popular online working environment for businesses. When they get to the office, each employee just needs to open 1Office to be able to carry out all necessary tasks,” Mr. Thang enthusiastically shared.

On August 20, 2020, the Ministry of Information and Communications recognized 1Office as the first national digital transformation platform in Vietnam.

In May 2023, 1Office gained significant momentum when it successfully raised millions of USD in a Series A funding round from investor Mynavi (a leading Japanese human resources services company). The Vietnamese startup’s platform was valued at tens of millions of USD.

“Developing B2B solutions requires a significant investment, at least 100 – 200 billion VND. New ‘players’ find it very difficult to enter the market. Fundraising is part of our startup roadmap, mainly to increase the company’s value, not for the purpose of ‘burning cash.’ Thanks to the investment from Mynavi, we have attracted more talented people; 1Office’s operations have become much more meticulous and professional, becoming a business that approaches international governance standards, audited by the Big4 (the 4 largest accounting firms in the world). The Japanese investor spent more than 8 months carefully reviewing 1Office’s operations, from its business model to legal, financial, technological, and corporate culture aspects… Securing funding from Mynavi helps 1Office enhance its reputation, thereby enabling us to reach larger clients,” said Mr. Thang, adding: “We are currently in contact with several other investment funds and will continue to raise capital from investors in the US and Europe in the near future.”

“For B2B (business-to-business) software solutions, passion is a necessary condition and perseverance is a sufficient one, unlike developing small-scale B2C (business-to-consumer) applications. The market now has get-rich-quick models, but their sustainability and the value they bring to society cannot compare to creating software solutions. After nearly a decade since starting the business, to this day, enterprise software solutions remain my passion,” shared the CEO of 1Office.

Currently, 1Office, along with Base and AMIS, are forming a “tripod” position, dominating the domestic enterprise management software solutions market.

The number of 1Office users is among the top in the market with nearly 500,000 users, of which about 300,000 are paid users (with the highest fee being around 150,000 VND/user/month and the lowest around 20,000 VND/user/month).

The construction design and consulting industry has the highest number of businesses using 1Office. The retail sector (food & beverage, technology, apparel, etc.) has the largest number of users. The client with the most users has over 6,000 users.

“With a fairly solid foundation in the Vietnamese market, 1Office is expected to launch a Global version in English in June 2025. It will be a ‘No-code, Low-code’ system (no coding, requiring few programming skills, users can drag and drop to use the software) for the international market. The shortcomings in the version serving the domestic market will be resolved and will not be repeated in the Global version,” CEO Le Viet Thang revealed to us.

The international market will present many “difficult challenges”: Much larger competitors; A much more demanding market; Much higher product requirements…

“We want to become a ‘disruptor’ in the competitive SaaS (Software as a Service) market. We want to target customers who are looking for new experiences and to enhance users’ self-service capabilities. 1Office’s competitive advantage is that the cost of developing software solutions in Vietnam is much lower than in other markets. The world still holds many opportunities for us to develop, expand our market, and grow our revenue,” Mr. Thang analyzed.

The “Go Global” orientation (expanding to the world market) actually existed right from the time the 1Office CEO started the business, because he soon realized that going abroad would mean more customers and higher selling prices, which translates to greater revenue. Moreover, software is easily globalized; you can sell it worldwide from one location.

“1Office’s revenue has reached nearly 100 billion VND/year. According to our assessment, in the Vietnamese market, 1Office’s revenue will only grow to about 300 billion VND/year before the growth momentum plateaus. I plan to hand over the management of domestic business operations to someone else when revenue reaches 10 billion VND/month, while I will focus on the foreign market segment. We will seek opportunities in nearby markets first, such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand… We’ll just proceed while observing and paving the way,” Mr. Thang shared.

To increase competitiveness when going global, in addition to a team of high-quality engineers and many of the country’s top programming talents, CEO Le Viet Thang is ready to “recruit” more foreign experts with a salary of about 5,000 USD/month and raise about 5 million USD in investment to complete the Global version.

Mr. Thang envisions the future of 1Office: For the domestic market, to reach a revenue of about 5-6 million USD/year by 2025, and about 20 million USD/year by 2030, maintaining the No. 1 position in Vietnam for enterprise management software. For the foreign market, to earn the first dollars in 2025, and by 2030, strive to bring in about 50 million USD/year in revenue to Vietnam, ranking among the Top 3 in Southeast Asia.

“In the domestic market, it took 1Office about 10 years from the launch of the first commercial version to reach a revenue of 300 billion VND. But if things go well in the international market, it will only take about 3 years to reach that revenue level,” Mr. Thang said confidently.

According to VietnamNet