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Dang Le Nguyen Vu
President &CEO - TrungNguyen
Vietnam

Dang Le Nguyen Vu is one of the most successful young entrepreneurs ofhis generation. At the age of 27 and after completing his medicalstudies at the Tay Nguyen University in 1996, he started building thelargest coffee plantation in Vietnam, in Daklak province and opened hisfirst coffee outlet in 1998 in Ho Chi Minh City. Within less than 10years, he operates 1.000 coffee shops, 7.000 outlets and 59,000 retailshops all over the country. His franchises are also present inThailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, China, Germany and the US. Hismeteoric rise in the coffee industry is a business phenomenon thatdeserves a study from the Harvard Business School. Dang Le Nguyen Vu isvoted the most successful young entrepreneur in ASEAN in 2004.
He is about to repeat a similar business growth model, based on theprinciple of guerrilla warfare applied to today’s globalizedcompetition. With the recent launch of the G7 Mart, a convenient storechain which set-up some first 500 model stores, and which will befollowed by some 10.000 stores in the next few years. The system willbe completed with a network of Viet Towns established overseas topromote Made-in-Vietnam products, and to serve as a conduit forresources networks to support development projects at home.
As the lead coffee company in Vietnam and the biggest exporter ofprocessed coffee, Trung Nguyen Corp has earned many awards, such as the“Top Five Brand” of agricultural products and foods in “The VietnameseHigh Quality Commodities Award” for several consecutive years since2.000. Trung Nguyen Corp has launched various campaign to promote“Creative for Branding Vietnam”. In 2005, Trung Nguyen Corp sponsored aTV show similar to the Apprentice show on NBC in the US. During BillGate’s visit to Vietnam early this year, Dang Le Nguyen Vu had lunchwith the Microsoft founder. Most recently, he launched the Dalatplatform as a knowledge city, where eventually a Microsoft Universityof Creative Technologies could be developed.
Trung Nguyen Corp is now making strategic planning to further penetratethe two largest markets for coffee, the US and the EU, with increasesale volume and opening franchise coffee shops. Asia is also apotentially great market where Trung Nguyen will develop G7 brand, witha special focus on China’s market, which is ready to shift from atea-drinking nation to a coffee-drinking people.