Mr. Ta Son Tung, Chairman of Rikkeisoft, recalls that when he was a child, he lived in a cramped apartment building of only about 30 square meters in Hanoi . His family always had siblings from the countryside staying there to study. In addition to his siblings, his parents' friends also sent their children to Tung's house to study. Because the house was cramped, Ta Son Tung never slept alone but always slept with his cousins. “My father is a war invalid so his salary is low. My mother is a tailor and is the main source of income for the whole family so the house is not rich. But our house is always full of joy. My mother does seasonal sewing, mainly receiving sewing goods from shops on the street during Tet. During the summer, my mother and my two sisters have to go to the market to sell longan and fabric to earn more income for the family. I am the child of a war invalid so I go to public school and am exempted from tuition. The family has many siblings but only one study desk so my two sisters and I have a very special schedule. We have to divide our time to use it. I go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 2am to study until 5am,” said Mr. Tung. When taking the university entrance exam, Ta Son Tung set a goal of being the valedictorian of the University of Science and Technology for a very simple reason so that his mother would be in the newspaper, because his mother worked hard to take care of the whole family and had the greatest influence on Tung. However, that dream did not come true when Tung scored 29.5 points and the valedictorian that year scored 29.7 points.
Ta Son Tung chose Bach Khoa because he wanted to study abroad in Japan, where there are many famous corporations. This dream of Ta Son Tung originated from the words of a brother, the son of his father's friend who came to study, that if he wanted to be successful, he had to study abroad. Ta Son Tung studied at Bach Khoa for 2 years and was then selected to study abroad in Japan at Ritsumeikan University. “After finishing my studies, I returned to Vietnam and joined FPT because it is the number 1 information technology company in Vietnam. At FPT, I learned a lot of things and was assigned to manage large projects. Through what I have done, I see that I can open my own company and work better than FPT, maybe it will be the number 1 company in Vietnam. After 11 years with many experiences, I see that my dreams and thoughts at that time still have the impetuosity of youth and FPT is still a great monument. But my dream has not changed. Rikkeisoft's leadership team are excellent people and we believe that we will do great things,” Ta Son Tung shared.
There is a very different point, the Chairman of Rikkeisoft always sees difficulties as fun and memorable experiences. Ta Son Tung said that although the Rikkeisoft leadership studied at 2 universities in Japan, they were originally in the same class at Polytechnic and were the best students. The reason for establishing the company is simply that they are close friends. Initially, the company had 4 people, including 2 full-time workers and 2 part-time workers. The initial capital to open the company was 80 million VND, the amount saved from working at FPT and savings while studying abroad in Japan. “When we first established the company, we used my house as our office. The office did not have air conditioning, so in the summer when we met with partners, we wore formal shirts in the Japanese style, but wore shorts underneath to keep cool. Later, a partner lent us their office, but in return we had to work for them. At first, we did not have tables and chairs, so we had to put our computers on styrofoam boxes to work, and we ate and slept at the company,” Ta Son Tung said.
Rikkeisoft's first client was a Japanese client with a rather difficult project, so Ta Son Tung discussed with the client that it had to be done in 5 months and the unit price was 180 million VND. However, Phan The Dung (currently the General Director of Rikkeisoft) alone only coded in 2 weeks and had money to support the company. Initially, when the company was first established, Ta Son Tung set a revenue target of 10 billion VND in the first year, 20 billion VND in the second year and 30 billion VND in the third year. At that time, there were no customers so the brothers in the company said "are you crazy" because there was no basis for setting that revenue target. Ta Son Tung said that even at that time, he did not know why he set that target, but he had faith that he would achieve that "crazy" target. Fortunately, in the first year, the company achieved a revenue of 3.2 billion VND, in the second year it reached 12 billion VND and in the third year it reached 27 billion VND. Ta Son Tung remembers the first days of working in Japan, we had to calculate very carefully because Vietnam Airlines airfare was very expensive. To go to Japan, we had to choose the cheapest ticket, transiting through Thailand with Thai Airways, which was half the price. When we arrived in Japan, we had to stay at the house of a friend who was studying in Japan because we didn't have money to rent a hotel or a house.

On the wall at Rikkeisoft's office is a diagram marking the company's journey over the past 11 years.

A characteristic of Japan is that universities are very far from the city center, so we have to take the bus into the city for several hours and walk 10-20km every day to meet customers. Luckily, our brothers and friends in Japan let us stay for free for a while to find customers. When we needed to use Wi-Fi, we ran to convenience stores, stood outside the door to "fish" for their Wi-Fi, even though the weather outside was quite cold. At that time, we had to buy night bus tickets from Tokyo to Osaka to save money. “In early 2013, I had to sleep at a Japanese train station twice because I couldn’t catch the last train of the day to go home to my friend. If I took a taxi, it would have cost 4-5 million VND, so I chose to sleep at the train station and continued to meet customers the next morning. I also don’t understand why there are so many homeless people at the train station to sleep at night. At first, I was a bit scared, but in Japan, the train stations are very clean and safe. Those difficult days made Rikkeisoft people stronger and more determined,” Ta Son Tung said. In the early days of its establishment, Rikkeisoft was still very young, with a few employees and a very rudimentary office. Through friends’ introduction to Japanese businesses, or through promotional channels, exchanges and cooperation promotion of the Vietnam Software Association - VINASA, Rikkeisoft got its initial customers. “We also have a slight advantage in approaching Japanese customers because we have been well-trained in this country and are able to communicate with customers in Japanese. At first, we started with mobile application development, which has a project scale suitable for small companies and large corporations that do not do these areas. Thanks to the team of co-founders, CTOs and initial members who are good and specialized in this area, we gradually conquered Japanese customers, including large corporations. Later, these customers introduced us to other customers.”, Ta Son Tung shared. Part 2: Not content with being at the top in Japan, Rikkeisoft's chairman has ambitions to IPO in the US
Photo: Pham Hai