Noodles in Ukraine, property in Vietnam
Pham Nhat Vuong made his first money far from home. In the early 1990s he moved to Kharkiv in Ukraine, where he started a small restaurant and then a food business called Technocom. Its instant noodle brand, Mivina, became one of the best known food brands in the country. Nestle bought Technocom in 2010, and by then Vuong was already putting the profits from Ukraine into Vietnam.
His first big project there was Vincom Center, a shopping and office complex in Hanoi completed in the middle of the 2000s. It was followed by Vinpearl, a resort and entertainment complex on an island near Nha Trang, and by large residential developments. In 2012 the property and resort businesses were merged into Vingroup, which is listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange.
Most of Vuong's wealth is tied to his controlling stake in Vingroup and its listed subsidiaries. Real estate, especially the large townships sold through Vinhomes, has provided most of the group's cash for years, and that cash has funded the expansion into other industries, above all the car business.
Inside Vingroup
Vingroup's main companies include:
- Vinhomes, the largest residential developer in Vietnam, building integrated townships in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and other cities
- Vincom Retail, which operates shopping malls across the country
- Vinpearl, a chain of resorts, hotels and amusement parks
- VinFast, a carmaker founded in 2017 that now produces only electric vehicles
- Vinmec hospitals, Vinschool schools and VinUni, a private university
- Xanh SM, an electric taxi and ride hailing service using VinFast cars
VinFast is the group's biggest bet. It opened a factory in Hai Phong in 2019, switched entirely to electric vehicles in 2022, and listed on the Nasdaq exchange in New York in 2023 through a merger with a blank check company. It has built a plant in India and announced one in the United States. The business has lost large amounts of money, and Vuong has supported it with his own funds and with support from Vingroup.
Vingroup has also exited some ventures, including smartphone and television production, which it closed in 2021. The group has a habit of entering a new industry at speed, testing it at scale and pulling back if it does not work, a pattern that has shaped its move into electric vehicles and transport services.
Student years in the Soviet Union
Vuong was born in 1968 in Hanoi. A strong student, he won a government scholarship to study in the Soviet Union and graduated in economic geology from the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute in the early 1990s.
As the Soviet Union broke up, many Vietnamese who had studied or worked there stayed and started trading businesses. Vuong married Pham Thu Huong, a fellow student, and the couple moved to Kharkiv, where they began their food business. Pham Thu Huong later became vice chair of Vingroup and has been closely involved in the group's education and health care companies.
Vuong returned to Vietnam in the early 2000s. He is known for an intense management style and for setting very ambitious targets, and he has remained chairman of Vingroup while delegating day-to-day roles to executives. Vingroup is widely known in Vietnam for strict internal rules and fast decision making, traits often linked to his years running a business in post-Soviet Ukraine.
Philanthropy and public profile
Vuong and his wife have given money to education, science and health causes in Vietnam. In 2020 they founded the VinFuture Foundation, which awards an annual international science prize recognizing research with practical benefits for humanity. The first prizes were awarded in 2022, and the main award has gone to research teams from several countries.
During the COVID-19 pandemic Vingroup donated medical equipment and funded vaccine research and production efforts in Vietnam, and it converted some facilities to help the national response. The family has also funded scholarships and talent programs for Vietnamese students and researchers.
He gives few interviews and rarely appears in public, but he is widely known in Vietnam because Vingroup brands are part of everyday life. He was the first person from Vietnam to be counted as a billionaire by international business media.