VietNamNet Bridge - Start-ups could earn millions of dollars by providing seedlings, raising Kerria lacca and developing Motorway apps, according to business plans expected to be applied this year. The following are being considered:

Shellac is considered the most important material for making paints, print ink and pharmaceuticals

* A group of students from the Hanoi Agriculture Institute has drawn up a project to develop seedlings for the northwestern part of the country, where there are about 1,627,671 hectares of uncultivated area. About 1,000 plants can be grown on each hectare. This would require 6 billion high-quality seedlings.

Capitalized at VND1.3 billion, the business would employ 35 workers, 65 collaborators and use three hectares of land.

Pham Viet Khoa, chair of FECON Foundation Engineering and Underground Construction JSC, said he was considering investments in a high-technology agriculture project and corporate governance support.

The founders of the project hope to recover investment capital after selling 35,000 seedlings, and make a profit of VND250 million in the first year of operation.

* Shellac is considered the most important material for making paints, print ink and pharmaceuticals. It cannot be replaced by any industrial product. Globally,100,000 tons of shellac are needed every year.

A project to breed Kerria lacca and produce shellac in Chuong My district of Hanoi has been proposed by a group of young men with an estimated investment capital of VND669 million.

Under the project, Kerria lacca would be bred on an industrial scale, while the production line would be supervised by qualified engineers.

Because shellac is now processed on a small scale by household-run workshops, the quality of products is unstable. 

The products would target three main groups – paint, varnish and food producers.

Shellac is priced at VND150,000 per kilo in the market, but project developers believe their product would be cheaper, at VND139,000 per kilo.

* It is estimated that there are 36 million motorbikes in circulation in Vietnam, but the services for motorbikes remain modest. Students at the HCM City University of Natural Sciences have developed a Motorway app which can be installed on Android 4.0 smartphones.

It can provide information about the nearest vehicle maintenance points, filling stations, motorbike parking lots, hot lines and basic motorbike repair techniques.

* A group of five students from three universities in Hanoi have successfully created a tool that helps recognize authentic and counterfeit goods. The app is developed on coding recognition technology. Users scan the bar codes of the products they buy and I-Check, the app, provides necessary information.

Tran Thuy