Startups from rice

Starting up when still in university with two small rice stores, Bui Thi Thanh Hieu has built and developed the enterprise into a company specialized in providing diversified rice products in Vietnam. In the past 20 years, Hanh Hieu said, following his grandfather and parent footsteps, she got to know rice since she was a small kid and fell in love with rice. When Hanh Hieu got into the University of Languages and International Studies in 1995, she set objective of establishing a chain of rice stores, taking good products to customers. With the determination, Hanh Hieu realized her dream in forming the Bao Minh agricultural products.

For many years, she has been to many places and find valuable rice seeds, so that customers will have chances to enjoy many kinds of rice from all over Vietnam. Not only buying and processing, in recent times, her enterprise has invested heavily in production and planning specialized area to grow rice. With modern technologies, many new rice products have been preserved and developed to support farmers, especially of ethnic minorities to sell rice with high value.

During the production process her enterprises has utilized the efficiency in 5 factor – linkage: government, scientist, farmers, distributors and Bao Minh agricultural products. With an aim to export to international markets and promoting Vietnamese brands, her enterprise has established a food safety procedure with ISO standard quality control. Therefore, the enterprise’s products have been available in some country such as Australia, Russia, the US, Germany or South Africa. With strong efforts and thanks to an efficient operation and food safety, after 20 years of start-up, Hanh Hieu has developed her enterprises to have 2,500 points of sales all over Vietnam.

In her career of 20 years, in many times Hanh Hieu had to face difficulties and challenges. For her, the biggest difficulty is fierce competition when many foreign companies investing in Vietnam in rice business, while domestic enterprises also focus on the local market. Or when her products become success, other enterprises got it duplicated and sell for lower prices. Besides, there are difficulties over the human resources, financial capabilities and unstable weather in rice growing. On the other hand, Bao Minh has diversified its products and taking opportunities to cement the company’s status in the market.

With this being said, Hanh Hieu considered this as the foundation for her business strategy. And for her story and start-up passion, it is important to have determination and never give up attitude to get to success.

Source: Ngoc Thuy – Tran Thao