There are Vietnamese businesses that have been making a lot of impressions in the land of cherry blossoms, making myself and many others extremely proud when mentioning their names in international contacts and meetings.
Rikkei Soft Company was established in 2012, focusing mainly on the Global segment (global market). Mr. Ta Son Tung - CEO of Rikkei is a former student of Hanoi University of Science and Technology, who received a scholarship from the Japanese Government to study in Japan for 3 years.
In 2016, Rikkei Soft established a legal entity in Japan, Rikkei Japan, and in 2020 established a branch in Osaka. Currently, Rikkei Soft has 4 branches in Vietnam and 4 branches in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka and Nagoya).
As of May 2023, Rikkei Soft has over 1,600 employees, 100% of whom speak a foreign language, 94% are university graduates, and the rest are post-graduates. 43% of employees have less than 3 years of seniority, demonstrating Rikkei's "hot" growth recently.
In terms of market, Rikkei Soft has over 500 corporate clients with over 1,000 projects. If previously, the Japanese market accounted for 100% of Rikkei's revenue, now, Japan only accounts for about 80%; the rest comes from other markets such as the US, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
With the mindset of “Rikkei goes global from Japan”, in 2023, Rikkei Japan will establish more branches in Thailand, and later possibly Korea and some other countries. The company's view is that coming from a developed country like Japan will make it easier to access other markets.
Rikkei Soft's ecosystem includes many member businesses, products and solutions such as: Rikkei Digital specializes in digital transformation and the Southeast Asian market; Rikkei Academy provides Japanese language and IT training for former international students and interns so that they can return or stay in Japan as IT engineers (focusing on international students who studied in Japan), and also trains international students in Japan with the goal of having 1,000 students; Rikkei Incubator provides funding for startups; Rikkei AI provides AI-powered solutions; Rikkei IT Service provides software services.
According to our research, one of Rikkei Soft’s strengths is providing digital transformation solutions for Japanese banks. One surprising discovery we made during our business trip was that many Japanese banking systems were built a long time ago and are outdated using the “classic” Cobol language. These 50-year-old systems have no documentation, and the programmers have passed away. Over time, banking data has become so large and sensitive that the old systems cannot handle the load. And now these banks need to move to the cloud.
Rikkei built a team of employees who were both good at information technology and good at banking. This team read and scanned each old Cobol program command to rewrite the document, then passed it on to the development team to build the program and put it on the cloud.
Previously, these tasks were done by Chinese companies. Rikkei has been working hard to build a team of experts, not just code, to elevate itself in the financial sector.
In the past, Chinese IT companies were the largest outsourcing service providers for Japan. But now, the Chinese have withdrawn from the Japanese market and moved back to the Chinese market because the unit price China pays is higher than Japan.
In 2023, the number of Vietnamese people in Japan will surpass the number of Chinese people for the first time (470 thousand compared to 440 thousand). Japan is therefore a great opportunity for Vietnamese businesses in the information technology sector to fill the gap left by the Chinese.
The current problem is the “problem” of human resources shortage. Talking to us, the leader of Rikkei Soft expressed his hope that the Ministry of Information and Communications would consult with the Government to propose to the Japanese side about using ODA capital for the program of developing high-quality IT human resources for Vietnam.
The Japanese government has a scholarship program to support excellent Vietnamese students to study in Japan. The founders of Rikkei Japan and NTQ Japan themselves came from the HEDSPI program sponsored by Japan for excellent students of Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Rikkei Soft leaders hope that the Vietnamese Government will discuss and propose that the Japanese Government recreate such a program in the near future.
Reality proves that this is a very good program, which will become a boost for exploiting the Japanese digital transformation market of Vietnamese information technology enterprises.
FPT Japan was established in 2005. Compared to local companies, FPT Japan has many advantages in terms of competitive income, support policies, and training for employees and their relatives. For example, in the context of many Vietnamese engineers regularly coming to Japan to work, FPT Japan rents a total of more than 600 dormitories across Japan for employees to have a place to stay when they first arrive in Japan. When they have settled down or when they start a family, they will move out and give the room to other employees.
In early 2023, Great Place To Work Institute Japan - a prestigious organization of Fortune magazine recognized FPT Japan in the Top 100 Best Places to Work. FPT Japan Holdings, FPT Software Japan and FPT Techno Japan received the Gold Certificate of Good Health Company.
In addition to preparing resources for large projects, FPT Japan also continuously introduces special policies such as “Go Japan”, “Enjoy Japan” and most recently “Taishokukin” (unemployment benefits)… to attract talent.
At FPT Japan, each individual develops themselves every day through online courses, helping to supplement the basic knowledge system and shorten the time to complete specific goals.
In April 2023, FPT Japan opened a training center for employees in Tokyo, capable of training 70 students in information technology at the same time. The company's weekend Japanese classes also attracted more than 250 employees.
In addition to the internal training system, FPT Japan's Japanese language school is currently teaching Japanese to 150 Vietnamese students so that they can study at Japanese vocational schools. The goal of opening IT vocational training schools combined with Japanese language teaching in Japan and in Vietnam is to take advantage of Vietnamese human resources in Japan as well as to reuse Vietnamese human resources whose visas have expired to return to Japan. According to statistics, about 300,000 Vietnamese people are studying various professions in Japan, but many of them have no jobs after graduation and have to return home.
Through several discussions and meetings with FPT Japan leaders, we realized some of the "secrets" to the success of this business.
One is “Using Japanese people to access the Japanese market”. In 2020, FPT Consulting was established with the majority of its employees being Japanese. If recruiting Vietnamese people, it would take decades to understand the language, culture, and business like the Japanese. Therefore, the company decided to recruit Japanese people from other companies.
Second, from “Offshore” to “NearShore” and “BestShore”. Previously, FPT Japan only opened offices in Japan, receiving work to transfer to Vietnam to perform in the “Offshore” way. But recently, Japan has a policy of only assigning work in Japan and not sending work abroad. To deal with this policy, FPT Japan has changed from offices to branches located in Japanese cities, implementing the “Near Shore” approach instead of “Offshore”.
In 2017, FPT Japan established the first “Nearshore” center, FPT Okinawa & R&D Joint Stock Company, later renamed FPT Near Shore, and opened additional branches in Fukuoka and Hokkaido. In June 2023, it established additional branches in Tochigi and Shizuoka prefectures.
Continuously increasing its market share in technology and IT services in Japan, participating in implementing many important digital transformation projects for leading Japanese enterprises, FPT Japan aims to be in the Top 20 largest IT service companies in Japan by 2025 and have revenue of 1 billion USD by 2027.
FPT Japan currently has 15 offices and headquarters in Japan, stretching from Hokkaido to Okinawa, with a total of about 500 customers. Revenue in 2022 is expected to reach 38 billion yen (equivalent to 360 million USD). In 2023, it is expected to reach 48 billion yen (21% growth), accounting for 37% of FPT Software's revenue.
From a few initial employees, by May 2023, FPT Japan had more than 2,500 employees with 19 different nationalities, including 600 Japanese. It is expected to reach 3,000 people by the end of 2023.
This Vietnamese enterprise also set itself a big goal of becoming a Global company that can compete with the world's leading corporations with the slogan "Beat The America" to achieve revenue of 1 billion USD and have 5,000 employees by 2027.
These Vietnamese businesses have been creating many impressive images in the land of cherry blossoms, making myself and many others extremely proud when mentioning their names in international contacts and meetings.
Article: Dr. Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, Deputy Director of Information Technology Industry Department, Ministry of Information and Communications
Design: Minh Hoa
Vietnamnet.vn
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