The Saigon Innovation Hub offers assistance to innovation initiatives and the start-up community in HCM City. — VNA/VNS Thanh Vũ

HCM CITY — Along with other preferential policies, HCM City has announced its financial support for innovative start-up projects in the city.

The city’s Department of Science and Technology has announced policies to boost the sustainable growth of the start-up ecosystem in the city.

The city will provide financial support for start-ups in three stages of pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration.

For pre-incubation, start-ups will receive support of VNĐ40 million (US$1,620) per project for no more than six months, including VNĐ10 million ($405) for labour wages and VNĐ30 million ($1,215) for other expenses.

For incubation, they will receive VNĐ80 million ($3,240) per project for no more than one year, including VNĐ30 million ($1,215) for labour wages and VNĐ50 million ($2,025) for other expenses.

For acceleration, they will receive VNĐ400 million ($16,200) per project for no more than one year, including VNĐ150 million ($6,070) for wages and VNĐ250 million ($10,130) for other expenses.

At its 12th meeting in November, 2023, the 10th municipal People’s Council approved a resolution for granting policies for priority fields, and conditions and support levels for innovative start-up projects in the city.

The eligible subjects of this resolution are individuals, groups, and businesses with innovative start-up projects in the city’s priority fields of e-commerce, financial technology, logistics, educational technology, healthcare, high-tech agriculture, sustainable development, digital transformation, and cyber security.

The criteria to select an innovative start-up project for financial aid this year include innovation, implementation capability, socio-economic effects, market potentials, and business model.

Phan Thị Quý Trúc, deputy head of the Office for Technology and Technological Market Management under the city’s Department of Science and Technology, said this year's start-up-related activities, such as registration, support and incubation, must all be updated precisely on the HCM City Open Innovation Platform (H.OIP).

“This is a tool to link members in the city’s innovative start-up ecosystem to strengthen the connection among start-ups and other organisations to share knowledge as well as address potential problems and transfer technologies,” she said.

According to the project to support the growth of the city’s innovative start-up ecosystem in the 2021-25 period, in 2024, the city will boost the innovation capacity of 900 businesses and incubate 300 innovative start-up projects.

It will focus on developing suitable infrastructure and supporting services in order to form a network of centres for innovative start-ups.

The Science and Technology Department is assigned to deliver support to commercialise products of innovative start-ups, help small and medium-sized enterprises to improve their performance, and promote innovative activities in the public sector.

With supporting policies for innovative start-up projects in the 2024-28 period, the city aims at offering aid to more than 1,000 projects at their pre-incubation stage, 700 at their incubation stage, and 200 at their acceleration stage so they can approach venture capitalists by 2028.

Nguyễn Việt Dũng, director of the city’s Department of Science and Technology, said in 2015 the city’s innovative start-up ecosystem was merely at its beginning stage.

Thanks to the Government’s project on supporting national innovative start-up ecosystems until 2025, along with the city’s multiple practical policies, the city now has a good ranking in the global map of these ecosystems, and is currently at the 113rd position out of 1,000 cities worldwide, he said.

“Cooperation between the State and academies, universities, incubators and businesses is expected to help the city surpass its set targets by 10-20 per cent after five years,” he said.

The plan also mentions training sessions for innovative start-ups. The city is going to hold such sessions about policies and their implementation methods to State management units who receive money to carry out those policies each year.

The city is also providing support to innovative solutions, products and services as well as innovative start-ups during the application process or feasibility evaluation in the form of science and technology tasks. — VNS