At the Danang Innovation and Startup Festival - SURF 2023 on the morning of September 29, Mr. Tran Chi Cuong, Vice Chairman of the City People's Committee, said that this is an annual event, a meeting place for the startup community in the city and to connect with investors and partners at home and abroad.

The event aims to promote innovative start-up activities, with direct and online participation of a large number of start-up communities, investors, scientists, managers and partners in the city's innovative start-up activities.

According to Mr. Cuong, in recent years, Da Nang has made constant efforts to develop an innovative startup ecosystem.

Specifically, the city has established a Center for Supporting Innovative Startups; at the same time, building policy mechanisms to promote the development of an innovative startup ecosystem such as: direct support for innovative startup projects/enterprises, interest rate support, support for technological innovation, intellectual property development, focusing on developing infrastructure for startups...

“With these efforts, the city’s startup ecosystem is growing. There have been innovative startups that have broken through and successfully raised millions of USD in capital. The city was also honored by the Vietnam Software and Information Technology Services Association (Vinasa) as an attractive city for innovative startups in 2020 and 2022,” Mr. Cuong shared.

At the same time, the Vice Chairman said that Da Nang is committed to accompanying businesses, taking businesses as the center of the entire innovative startup ecosystem for development.

According to Mr. Pham Hong Quat, Director of the Department of Market Development and Science and Technology Enterprises (Ministry of Science and Technology), in Vietnam, the innovation and startup ecosystem in general and innovation and startup activities in particular have developed strongly and achieved many impressive results.

As the central role of the ecosystem, innovative startups have made breakthroughs and grown strongly, contributing to socio-economic development.

A report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) noted that Vietnam is among the countries that have made the greatest progress in the past decade. The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2022 report published by WIPO also showed that Vietnam ranked 48th out of 132 countries and economies, holding the 3rd position in Southeast Asia, after Singapore (7th) and Thailand (43rd).

Vietnam currently has more than 1,400 organizations with the capacity to support startups, including 196 co-working spaces, 69 business incubators and 28 established business promotion organizations. The number of venture capital funds that consider Vietnam as a target market or have operations in Vietnam is 108, of which 23 funds have Vietnamese legal entities and 23 are purely Vietnamese funds.

This number has been continuously increasing in recent years, demonstrating the active participation of the community in developing the ecosystem. Vietnam's startup ecosystem is ranked 54th in the world and 12th in the Asia-Pacific region (according to Startup Blink's assessment in 2022).

According to Mr. Pham Hong Quat, Da Nang has an extremely important role and position in the regional and national economic development strategy as it is located on the North-South traffic artery, an important traffic gateway for both the Central and Central Highlands regions as well as the connection point of the East-West economic corridor.

Therefore, the Politburo issued Resolution No. 43 on building and developing Da Nang until 2030, with a vision to 2045, with the goal of "Building Da Nang City to become one of the major socio-economic centers of the country and Southeast Asia with the role of a center for innovative startups".