A Vietnamese company once did something the world thought only Disney could do

“At that time, Disney was the only one in the whole world with this coloring book app. We persuaded the team that if Disney could do it, we could too. And in the end, we really did it,” said Mr. Nguyễn Thế Duy, Vice President of ADT Global Technology Company.

Boldly starting up with the first interactive technology: virtual reality

Ten years ago, after a long period of study in the UK, the young Nguyễn Thế Duy received an invitation to return home to take part in a rather interesting project, and decided to give up his job in the “land of fog.”

“With the experience and perspective I’d gathered in the UK, I felt I should do something more useful for my country. At that time, I believed the Vietnamese market held many opportunities to do more groundbreaking things than staying in the UK,” Nguyễn Thế Duy explained of his decision to return home and form a startup team with a few friends.

Studying a number of finance, technology, and communications projects in Vietnam at the time, Nguyễn Thế Duy noticed that the domestic market seemed to be lacking technology-related experiences in communications for businesses.

“Having studied interactive technology in London, and wanting to bring new technologies home to apply them, I decided to found a company to realize that wish. ADT was born in 2015, where A stands for Advance, D for Digital, and T for Tech. At first, we didn’t set any grand mission; we simply thought that the market was new, with plenty of ‘ground’ for us to develop many new things with high effectiveness and feasibility. The goal back then was only to help Vietnamese businesses convey the message of their products and services to their customers in a more visual, easy-to-understand way through technology,” Mr. Duy recalled.

From the very first day of its founding, the ADT team determined that the company’s “DNA” would be to always focus on groundbreaking, innovative technologies such as virtual reality (VR, AR), and in recent years the metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI).

At a time when the concept of “virtual reality” was still very new in Vietnam, the process of investing time and money, attending events, and building showcases to persuade customers to try it out was full of hardship. Finding personnel for a new field was also difficult. On top of that, the team had to keep doing research and development (R&D) to optimize products that were both good and “wallet-friendly” for Vietnamese businesses.

ADT’s first “sweet fruit” came quite by chance, in the manner of “good fragrance spreads on its own.”

“One fine day, Viettel Group contacted us. At that time, Viettel was launching 4G and needed new experiences and technologies that could clearly show off the power of 4G speed. Viettel searched Google for names of virtual reality service and technology providers, but after scrolling through 9 pages of only foreign companies, ADT appeared on page 10. This was the first ‘sweet fruit’ ADT received. We were very happy to be approached by a large domestic company. It was also a chance for us to spread a new product and new technology to the Vietnamese market,” Mr. Duy recalled.

Looking back on the 10-year journey from a startup to its current scale (with member companies ADT Creative, ADT Global, OneS, and Labelless), during which the team faced no shortage of pressure and strain, Mr. Duy drew out a few “secrets” that helped the ADT team avoid giving up easily.

First, a startup needs thorough preparation. Before stepping onto the entrepreneurial path, you must anticipate an extremely harsh competitive environment. The necessary and sufficient conditions are not just an idea, but the sum of many factors such as people, the market, and the product. Sometimes doing well isn’t necessarily enough; it also depends on luck and the right timing.

In difficult moments, the team needs to truly understand one another, be ready to sacrifice time, effort, and personal happiness for the group, and be ready to “fight” for each other.

Alongside that, you need to truly persevere through hardship. Sometimes everything is going well, and suddenly unwanted problems appear. You have to understand that this is normal, accept it with a calm mindset, and be ready to face it and get through it.

“Just keep walking, and we’ll grow, and we’ll prove our products and our reputation in the market. From there, good things will come to us naturally.” This philosophy, formed from practice, seems very similar to the content of two books that Vice President Nguyễn Thế Duy loves: The Infinite Game and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, Volume 2 (Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs).

Start from the market to see the path: ADT Global Founder: “Start from the Market to See the Path” – ADT Global — AI, Physical AI & Interactive Technology

Combining rigid logic with soaring creativity to build a competitive edge

Vice President Nguyễn Thế Duy has always taken pride in ADT being a technology communications company, one that does both communications and technology, like combining the left brain and the right brain: on one side logic, code, and rigidity; on the other, creativity, imagination, and an artistic temperament. It’s very hard to combine the two, but ADT is determined to make it work, in order to give people who experience its products and services an extremely “Wow” feeling.

Building an R&D technology team that meets these demands takes a great deal of effort, skill, and diversity of perspective. Sometimes there are creative ideas that go beyond what technology can do and simply can’t be realized yet. But for technology ideas that don’t feel quite ripe now, yet can be improved in the future and would bring great value, you have to pursue them to the end.

“I still remember a time when we had a deal involving the development of a coloring book app. At that time, Disney was the only one in the whole world with this kind of coloring book app. Everyone thought Disney was a huge global corporation that had to invest a great deal of money, so how could a small Vietnamese startup like ADT do it? We persuaded the team that if Disney could do it, we could too. And in the end, we really did it. This success is also one of the motivations that keeps ADT striving, making an effort, and trusting in its team to develop new technology,” Mr. Duy recounted the old story, his eyes shining with pride.

Answering the question “which of ADT’s technology products and solutions are you most fond of,” Mr. Duy said: Besides its communications and marketing services, there are 4 products ADT has developed that are achieving early success.

The first is a digital human product with generative AI functionality, designed to look like a human and able to communicate and interact like a real person, with many different expressions and states. ADT has taken this product to be showcased in many places, both domestically and internationally.

The second is a core AI language-processing product with extremely fast response speed, which ADT recently supplied to a client for a demonstration at GITEX, one of the largest global technology events, and which was recognized by the global community.

The third is a metaverse product that has taken shape, where people can enter and communicate and interact with one another. ADT currently plans to add AI non-player characters (AI NPCs) into the metaverse environment, capable of independent thinking and flexible communication, which would be very useful for training and instruction activities.

And the fourth is an XR platform: covering augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR), running “all in one” directly on the web without needing to download an app. Previously, to view virtual reality content, users had to download a new application, which was seen as a major obstacle. Now, people only need to scan a QR code or open a web link to experience virtual reality easily.

According to Mr. Duy, ADT’s technology products have many competitive advantages over both domestic and international competitors.

“Compared with domestic companies, we have an additional technology element on the communications side, which enhances the experience of businesses’ users and customers, so that they feel more emotion when using the services. Especially compared with international companies, we have a very good advantage in competing on price, since we deliver software quality while also offering aesthetics and high artistic quality, meeting very demanding criteria,” Mr. Duy described in more detail the competitive advantages of his company.

Proud of a digital human product developed by Vietnamese people

In recent days, the character Hạ Vy, a product researched and developed by ADT together with its member units, has been drawing the attention of the Vietnamese public.

Hạ Vy is Vietnam’s first AI Digital Human, developed by ADT, and was recently officially launched at the Vietnam International Innovation Exhibition 2023 (VIIE 2023).

To build Hạ Vy, the AI core was upgraded and integrated with a hyper-real digital human, creating the only AI Digital Human in Vietnam to date.

The virtual human Hạ Vy appears with a complete full-body design, able to decide her own expressions and body language and to converse in real time.

Notably, the AI Digital Human Hạ Vy has broken multiple records in: speech-to-text processing speed, at 0.1 seconds for 50 words; text-to-speech speed, at under 2 seconds for 50 words; and context recognition with extremely fast response speed, at 0.1 seconds to respond to 50 words in context (an average of 3 to 5 characters per word).

Besides communicating fluently in Vietnamese and processing information quickly, Hạ Vy can also proactively create content, teach herself, and generate her own answers when asked.

Virtual humans like Hạ Vy can take part in a wide range of advertising and sales activities, such as customer care, self-service, video bots, KOLs, models, AI MCs, AI tour guides, brand ambassadors, and even 24/7 sales livestreams across multiple platforms.

“Hạ Vy is a product developed by the ADT team, from the character design and the 3D model to the expressions and responses. All of the digital content was handled by ADT. We’re very proud of this Digital Human developed by Vietnamese people,” Mr. Duy emphasized.

Sharing his impressions of Hạ Vy, Mr. Lê Khánh Hưng, CEO of Aries Strategy, said: “This is the first time I’ve experienced this technology, and I find it very advanced. I think my current clients also need technologies like this. It isn’t limited to KOLs or sales experiences. The large corporations that are my clients badly need automation technology and the delivery of information at high frequency, in a civilized and professional way. From the perspective of large corporations, this technology can save a lot of cost and create professionalism and consistency across all their branches.”

Seizing the opportunity to export Vietnamese “brainpower” internationally

Some time ago, ADT made efforts to bring virtual reality technology to children in schools, hoping to spread new technology to young people, who will lay the groundwork for this technology to become more widespread in the future. However, with the company’s still modest size, bringing technology to children took a great deal of time and effort, so ADT had to temporarily scale back this activity to focus on R&D and business, aiming to bring Vietnamese technology products to the world. The company still has a number of cooperation programs with domestic universities and high schools on career guidance for students.

“Beyond collaborating with large Vietnamese businesses, ADT Global has also ‘joined hands’ with quite a few major international companies such as Intel, Meta, STE, Surbana Jurong, G42, and others. We’ve supplied our Digital Human product to several international markets such as South Korea, Singapore, the US, and the UAE, and recently a number of companies in other countries have expressed interest, so ADT is researching how to expand into overseas markets,” Mr. Duy said.

Assessing the development potential of interactive technology, Vice President Nguyễn Thế Duy said: “Interactive technology, or technology communications, is an inevitable trend. I think it’s also an opportunity for Vietnam to export its ‘brainpower’ internationally and step out into the world. With strong human resources, professionalism that is increasingly standardized, and reasonable costs, Vietnam can develop products and provide services to the world with quality no less than that of larger countries.”

Mr. Duy noted that Vietnam has many advantages in developing applications related to digital humans and AI across many sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and urban management. Vietnam has a relatively large population, widespread internet access at affordable prices, many people who are strong in mathematics, and many incentives to promote the development of technology and innovative products. What Vietnamese businesses need to do is seize the opportunity to rise.

Currently, ADT is continuing to research, refine, and optimize its products. Digital humans will be one of this Vietnamese company’s key highlights in 2024.

Envisioning the “Make in Vietnam” technology products that ADT will research and develop 5 and 10 years from now, Mr. Duy hopes: “The world will know Vietnam as a country that provides high-quality products, meeting standards in visuals, experience, and internal performance alike. Focusing on breakthrough technologies such as virtual reality, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence, ADT Global is ready to join the race in a flat world.”

Before we ended the conversation, we probed further into the biggest aspiration of ADT’s “boss.” Mr. Duy cheerfully shared: “I’ve always wanted the people around me to live as happily, joyfully, and comfortably as possible. If the people around me are happy, then I’m happy. That was my biggest wish when I decided to come home and start a business, and it still is today.”

A Vietnamese business successfully building complex interactive systems, something the world once assumed only “giants” like Disney could do, has opened up a new standard for corporate events. To reach this level of showmanship, organizations need to understand the core nature of immersive experience. It’s not just a simple visual effect, but an overall spatial design strategy that envelops the senses and blurs the line between real and virtual, thereby fully optimizing how customers take in a brand’s message.

The key to realizing these above-standard spaces lies in the synchronized integration of high-end hardware and software solutions. Among them, XR immersive technology serves as the spearhead in breaking through physical limits, simulating large-scale 3D environments with absolute realism. The visual touchpoint is elevated further through interactive hologram systems, turning static empty spaces into areas that display multi-dimensional floating data. Moreover, to sustain engagement throughout the journey, deploying a dedicated interactive immersive software empowers customers to actively steer their own path, turning them from passive observers into the center of the entire business story.

Theo Bình Minh – Vietnamnet