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Delegates of the 2nd Global Forum on Business Incubation provide their impressions from Hyderabad.
Tuan Minh Pham, CRC Incubator, Vietnam
CRC Incubator has grown very quickly in a short period of time. How did you leverage the initial funding from infoDev?
The initial funding from infoDev helped us in numerous ways. Beyond the obvious financial assistance, the funding boosted the credibility of CRC Vietnam.
The fact that we received funding from infoDev and were implementing the incubator project showed our potential partners three things:
- We had experience in managing and leveraging donor support;
- Our financial management practice met World Bank/infoDev standards; and
- Our experience as a pioneering incubator in Vietnam can be a useful asset to ensure sustainability in other social-impact projects.
We leveraged these factors in our discussion for potential sponsorship from Microsoft to implement the TOPIC64 project, which will virtually incubate community ICT training centers in 64 provinces across Vietnam. Later, the credibility was further leveraged, with help from Microsoft, to persuade other sponsors like Qualcomm, EVN Telecom, USAID, Hewlett-Packard to come on board.
What are some of the challenges that CRC Incubator is facing and how do you plan to overcome them?
For the virtual incubation activities, we are in great need of e-learning content to share with the 64-province network of training centers. Thus far, we have provided the training centres with basic-IT curriculum, but we need more content like degree programs in IT, business, accounting and short courses in entrepreneurship, tax regulations etc., so that our members can generate more revenue to sustain themselves. We are contacting universities in the US, Europe and India, as well as discussing with private sector corporations to find appropriate content.
On the physical incubation front, we need to expand our current 80 square meter office space to accommodate the existing 7 tenants and potentially more. There are several new buildings under construction on our university campus, and we are in 3-way discussions with the university and the Ministry of Science and Technology to find solutions.
And as always, we need to raise more sponsorship or generate cashflow to invest in developing content for virtual incubatees, and seed funding for physical tenants.
What needs to be done to attract support from large companies and institutions such as Microsoft, Qualcomm, HP, USAID? What advice do you have for other incubators who are looking for funding?
First of all, we leveraged the snowball effect which the infoDev funding helped to generate. infoDev funding helped persuade Microsoft, and this in turn convinced Qualcomm, USAID, HP, EVN Telecom etc.
However, leveraging credibility alone would have only carried us so far. We had to deliver good quality results. We set up quantitative targets together with the sponsors (e.g. number of students and teachers trained, number of training centers breaking even, and number of postings on the web forum). We then met these targets consistently and verifiably on a monthly or quarterly basis.
It is important to note that delivering result is not enough – we had to do that in a visible way, as the single most important thing sponsors are looking for is publicity. We were strategic in setting our deadlines around major events like Bill Gates' visit to Vietnam, APEC Summit in Hanoi etc. We were also proactive in preparing statistics, pictures, stories, presentations in order to support our sponsors in showcasing the results.
What are some of the services that CRC Incubator offers to its tenants and which has the most demand?
The "Open Consulting" sessions are very successful. This concept was developed after many experiments with different formats for networking events (eg. Business Plan Presentation Day, Investor-Inventor Happy Hours etc). We take 4-5 new start-ups, write short cases about them on a particular topic like financial management, sales and promotion, risk management etc. Then we invite experts such as managers from large corporations, leaders of successful startups, professionals from consulting firms to come to the event and give one-to-one advice to each case subject. The interactive consulting session is open to all interested, divided into groups of 20-30 around one advisor and a case subject.
It is also worthwhile to pay attention to the little details when planning a session, such as providing refreshments and including little games which allow people to get to know each other and to loosen up after a long day of work.
Are there any services that CRC Incubator does not currently offer but would like to in the future?
Our current service offering, provided by our own staff or affiliate firms, is quite comprehensive including marketing, business plan development, business IT applications, accounting, legal procedures etc. However, we would like to deepen the services (i.e. more in-house staff for high demand services, more options in external service providers). We would also like a set up a seed fund, and a credit guarantee scheme for small and micro credits to offer incubatees.
What are CRC Incubator's future plans for growth?
For physical incubation, we expect to receive more space and funding from the university, the Ministry, and other sponsors to expand the number of incubatees and the depth of services provided to them.
For virtual incubation, we expect to provide more e-learning content as a commercial product to our 64-province incubatee network. We also expect to leverage the TOPIC64 program's publicity to attract more incubatees – the training centers who might not have received equipment donations as the first 64 did, we will work with them to to provide in-kind incubation support (branding and marketing, management processes, training content, teacher skills training) that will help them to participate in the program.
What have you learnt from the Forum that you will take back with you to Vietnam?
With my colleagues from the Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology, we learned valuable lessons from many, especially the Indian Department of Science and Technology and the Technology Development Board, which helped to formulate our own technology business incubation policies. I have also met people with common interests with whom I would like to keep in touch and maintain a network in the future.
How do you aim to participate in the Asia Regional Network going forward?
I am ready to share our particular experiences, share our contacts for corporate sponsors, and develop joint ideas with incubators in other countries for cross-border programs that might potentially be attractive for sponsors who are usually looking for the "newest", "largest" or "best" ideas.