ADT Global and the zero-capital startup story of young people

Only 3-4 years after returning to their home country and venturing into the virtual reality technology industry—which was still extremely novel in Vietnam—a group of young people under 30 has become partners with major domestic and international corporations. They are the co-founders of ADT Global Technology JSC (ADT Global).

Starting Up With… Zero Capital

Pham Ngoc Mai Anh and Nguyen The Duy returned to Vietnam in 2013, following six years of studying interactive media technology and finance in the UK. At that time, the interactive technology industry, specifically virtual reality (VR), was still very new in Vietnam. Mai Anh had to relocate to Ho Chi Minh City to find the space and time to experience and work, aiming to grasp the market’s demand for applying new technologies and innovations in the advertising sector.

Meanwhile, The Duy applied to work for a large finance company in Hanoi to understand the working culture in Vietnam, which he still found quite unfamiliar. However, after less than a year, realizing his true passion was VR technology, The Duy met up with Mai Anh to brainstorm ideas for actualizing the VR media sector in Vietnam.

Mai Anh recalled that when she first returned to Vietnam, she was fortunate to be sponsored by a Singaporean company to execute some of her long-cherished projects. At the same time, The Duy had managed to build a robotics development team and a teaching curriculum. These were the very first foundations that built ADT Global today.

After aligning their goals, the first thing the two young entrepreneurs did was build an educational program for children that applied the world’s latest interactive technologies. Those were the first stepping stones, marking the official emergence of ADT Global. In less than a month, their first product took shape.

Their subsequent efforts boosted their determination even higher. They sent product introductions to elementary and middle schools across Hanoi, and the first good news arrived within three months: Archimedes Academy agreed to incorporate the new technologies into their teaching. Within that same year, Mai Anh and Duy secured further partnerships with Thuc Nghiem Middle School, Ngoi Sao Educational System, and Kinh Bac International School in Bac Ninh.

“These were optimistic initial signs, demonstrating the openness, adaptability, and foresight of Vietnamese society in integrating information technology into education. This fueled ADT with more enthusiasm to continue developing new technologies applied to education, bringing exciting and useful tools to young students. We desire to bring new, friendly, relatable, and modern learning experiences and methods to children in Vietnam,” Mai Anh shared.

Becoming Partners With Major Corporations…

While simultaneously spreading new VR technologies to elementary and middle schools, ADT Global also sought ways to provide these cutting-edge technologies to large corporations and companies in Vietnam. They gradually became known as one of the pioneering VR tech companies in the country.

Mai Anh recounted that upon learning the Military Telecommunications Industry Corporation (Viettel) was seeking a VR technology partner in Vietnam, ADT Global immediately jumped in to compete shoulder-to-shoulder with over 10 agencies from North to South. This involved presentations, capability demonstrations, tests, and conversations with Viettel’s leadership about future visions, projects, people, and life values—traits highly essential for young managers in a new era.

Mai Anh stated: “Facing those challenges, ADT could only try our absolute best and present the finest of what we had. We always reminded each other that this was not a race, but an opportunity for us to showcase our product quality, a chance to bring VR technology closer to Vietnamese youth.”

In the end, ADT’s VR tourism proposal was selected. ADT Global is perhaps the youngest agency to sign a comprehensive partnership contract with Viettel. Following Viettel, ADT Global successively collaborated on digitization with major entities like BMW and Language Link.

“We demonstrated aspiration, ambition, and a constantly radiating positive energy. We always prioritize a spirit of learning, striving for progress, and never shying away from constructive feedback,” Mai Anh excitedly shared regarding the reasons partners chose ADT Global.

On their journey to becoming a digitization partner for large corporations, ADT Global noted their pride in having successfully signed a partnership with Booyoung Real Estate Group (the 13th largest conglomerate in South Korea). Mai Anh pointed out that most Korean companies choose Korean partners to provide services for them, especially in real estate—a high-value industry demanding immense prestige.

When Booyoung Group launched their real estate projects in Hanoi, they needed a partner for spatial digitization to simulate their project spaces in 360 degrees, allowing customers to experience the projects before completion. They also harbored the ambition to be the first real estate enterprise to apply VR technology so customers could walk into the space and interact with the project’s virtual model homes.

Despite having some experience in digitizing for several fairly large organizations, Mai Anh did not believe ADT Global would be the chosen name. However, after an extensive search, Booyoung “finalized” ADT Global for this assignment.

Booyoung Group also stated that this was their first time working with an advertising service provider in Vietnam. “We couldn’t believe that we would be chosen to execute their project. This great joy empowered us, making us realize that our product quality can rival that of regional countries and, looking further, the world,” Mai Anh could not hide her joy when sharing with us.

Although selected as a partner by many major companies and corporations, the ultimate goal of the young team at ADT Global is to… inspire the Vietnamese market. “So that Vietnam will have interactive technology products ‘made in Vietnam’ from A to Z—from content and quality to technology—to bring to the world, so that Vietnam will not just stop at being a software outsourcing country like it is today,” the woman born in 1988 affirmed.