Do Thi Huong Thao, Founder and CEO of VinaStraws Joint Stock Company: Persisting with the belief in green living.
For four years, Do Thi Huong Thao endured losses while determined to nurture her entrepreneurial dream with a belief in sustainable green living through her VinaStraws straws made from grains.
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| CEO Do Thi Huong Thao. |
Alternatives to plastic straws
Plastic is considered a threat to the planet. Seemingly small products like plastic straws are causing significant environmental consequences. Global statistics show that of the 8 million tons of plastic dumped into the ocean each year, 4% comes from straws.
“We only have one planet, and right now, we need to work together to protect it. Small actions can make a huge difference,” CEO Do Thi Huong Thao shared with a reporter from Investment Newspaper.
With the desire to contribute to the global and Vietnamese effort to reduce plastic waste, in 2019, Ms. Huong Thao and the VinaStraws team launched a product: cereal straws made entirely from rice flour and tapioca flour, ensuring biodegradability within 3 months.
Compared to paper straws, VinaStraws cereal straws have the advantage of being edible and can be soaked in water for up to 2 hours without deforming.
According to the founder of VinaStraws, the product is trusted and used by many cafes, hotels, and high-end resorts in Hanoi , Ho Chi Minh City, Bac Ninh, Hai Phong, and other locations. In its first year, the company exported 8 tons of cereal straws worth approximately 400 million VND to a customer in Germany. To date, VinaStraws' overseas market has expanded to South Korea, the Czech Republic, the UK, Switzerland, and more. The company is also actively negotiating to introduce VinaStraws cereal straws to the US market.
The immediate goal set by CEO Huong Thao and the VinaStraws team is to boost exports and continue promoting and winning over domestic customers, striving for an export turnover of 7 billion VND/year and revenue from the domestic market of 3 billion VND/year. VinaStraws is also actively researching a new material for producing straws, still aiming to protect the environment, but capable of replacing rice flour and cassava flour and potentially helping the company lower production costs.
Currently, Vinastraws' cereal straws are priced at 300 - 1,000 VND per product, depending on the size.
Nurture your entrepreneurial dreams.
"For four years now, we've still been operating at a loss," CEO Do Thi Huong Thao said, reflecting on her challenging entrepreneurial journey.
Previously, Huong Thao worked in the import-export field. One day, she happened to watch a video of a sea turtle suffering from a plastic straw stuck in its nose, and she became deeply concerned about environmental protection.
With the support of family and friends, in 2019, Huong Thao founded VinaStraws, with a production line located in Hai Duong. As a newcomer to the industry, Huong Thao can't remember how many batches of defective straws she had to discard in order to find the final formula for the product.
Even with technical issues, due to a lack of experience, the VinaStraws team spent billions of dong investing in a production line, but ultimately had to abandon it because it required a large workforce, had low productivity, and a high loss rate. Huong Thao, however, found ways to raise funds and invested in a new production line that only required 3 workers to operate, with a loss rate of 10-15%, meeting export demands.
Cereal straws are a very promising product, but in reality, VinaStraws' revenue is still insufficient to cover costs. From the end of 2022 to 2023, many key personnel in the company decided to leave. Ms. Huong Thao herself also struggled many times, caught between the choice of stopping or continuing. Ultimately, her belief in a product that benefits the environment kept her going.
"Despite incurring losses, looking at it positively, VinaStraws is still gaining many new customers; the number of orders from existing customers is still increasing, albeit not significantly," the founder, born in the 1980s, expressed.
To nurture her entrepreneurial dream, Huong Thao maintains several side jobs while also selling handicrafts and dried agricultural products to generate additional income. She says that, broadly speaking, not only VinaStraws, but many other startups with products like grass straws and paper straws are also actively taking on extra jobs to continue on their chosen path.
In Vietnam today, due to profit motives, many restaurants and cafes still prioritize the use of plastic straws. However, the CEO of VinaStraws believes that things will shift in a more positive direction in the future, as domestic customers, especially the younger generation, begin to change their consumption habits and move towards environmentally friendly products. Globally, the European Union (EU) and many countries have banned or restricted single-use plastic products.
"Rice straws cannot completely replace plastic straws, but they will certainly become more popular. I believe that VinaStraws rice straws have the potential to go from Vietnam to the whole world," affirmed founder Do Thi Huong Thao.
In 2021, VinaStraws won the Innovative Social Business Concept award in Round 2 of the Social Impact Business competition organized by HEC Montreal University, Canada. That same year, the startup won the Special Prize at the “Connecting Startups - Investors, Mentors” competition – one of the startup support programs under the National Innovation Startup Ecosystem Support Project until 2025 (Project 844).
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