Mr. Nguyen Thanh My promised his future wife, Bui Thi Nhan, that he would return to his hometown to build a factory, create jobs, and help villagers in the rural area have a better life when he and his fiancé both worked as waiters at a famous restaurant in Canada in 1982. The promise has come true today when the man is now the president of a corporation with an advanced technology chain that is applying new technologies it in his poor homeland to help hundreds of rural workers have stable jobs.
A journey from being a waitress to a successful business owner
Former waiter Nguyen Thanh My, currently Chairman of My Lan Group in Tra Vinh City in the Mekong Delta Province of Tra Vinh, is one of Vietnam's outstanding businessmen. When he was a child, he was both studying and working hard to help his mother take care of his younger siblings.
With his own efforts, he graduated from Ho Chi Minh City Polytechnic University before immigrating to Canada in 1979. Mr. My remembered living in a foreign land, he had to struggle to find a job as a waiter at a restaurant where he met my soulmate, Ms. Bui Thi Nhan. The couple later got married in Canada.
After getting married, he enrolled to study English and majored in analytical chemistry at Concordia University (Canada), completing his bachelor's degree in 1986.
Two years later, he successfully defended his thesis. Master's thesis on "Heterogeneous Catalysts" and doctoral thesis in 1990 with the specialty 'Electrically conjugated macromolecular compounds' at the Canadian Materials Energy Science Research Center. Many large corporations in the US such as IBM, Sun Chemical, and Kodak PolyChrome Graphics. invited him to work for them but in 1997, Mr. My decided to return to Canada to establish his own company with offset printing technology, He leased copyrights in many countries around the world and multinational production and business scale.
Becoming a successful businessman and scientist with over 200 patents, Mr. My decided to return to his homeland - Tra Vinh Province - where he wanted to finish his biggest dream in life to build a factory, create jobs, and help people in the village have a better life, said Mr. My.
in 2004, leaving the company in Canada for his wife to manage, he returned to his homeland alone. At that time, Tra Vinh was still facing many difficulties and asynchronous transportation infrastructure. The place where Long Duc Industrial Park is located now was still vast fields at that time. Through many hardships and challenges, he developed the My Lan Group, specializing in the production of CTP offset printing plates, industrial inkjet machines and inks, and highly gas-resistant multi-layer plastic films - products that require expertise and highly skilled.
Determined to overcome existing difficulties, he turned My Lan Group into one of the largest corporations, a trusted partner of more than 40 countries. After 20 years of construction and development, My Lan Group has become a high-tech optoelectronic valley in the world headquartered in a province in the Mekong River region.
In 2016, Mr. My established three new companies comprising Rynan Agrifoods, Rynan Technologies, Rynan Smart Fertilizers under the management My Lan Group, located on Long Tri Island of Tra Vinh City specializing in applying high technology to agriculture such as smart fertilizer production, internet of things devices such as smart locks, water meters and e-commerce, buoys to monitor salt water and smart fertilizers.
In the past, people living in drought and salinity areas had to taste to test the salinity of the water, or those who were better off bought a salinity meter to check the water source before watering orchards. Nowadays, they just need to sit at home and view pH, salinity, and temperature indicators on a smartphone with an internet connection.
Thousands of households exchange fresh water for daily life, production, and irrigation. The water source was salty but people did not know that they were irrigating the garden, causing heavy loss when their tree in the orchard turned out to be yellow. From that reality, Mr. My wants to apply cloud computing technology to agricultural production, supporting people in farming to adapt to saltwater intrusion from farming to aquaculture.
He and a team of engineers from Tra Vinh spent months researching the sweet and salty monitoring buoy. The buoy is placed in the river. The buoy has a sensor system that will transmit data to the smartphone via software installed on the phone.
At that time, people can determine the appropriate time to actively pump water when the salinity is lower than the previously set parameter threshold, without having to use manual measures as before. Flower farmer Dinh Thi Phuong in Vinh Yen hamlet of Tra Vinh City's Long Duc Commune happily said that she no longer feared for salinity season after using the sweet and salty sensor float.
In recent years, farmers in the Mekong Delta have known about a type of slow-release fertilizer manufactured by Mr. Nguyen Thanh My. After use, water penetrates through the coating membrane inside and slowly dissolves the feces. Depending on the type of crop, smart fertilizers are produced that take 1-12 months or longer to fully disperse minerals to the plant from seed delivery to harvest.
In 2017, this fertilizer was tested on an area of 200 hectares of rice in Tam Nong District of Dong Thap Province. According to the agricultural sector of Dong Thap province, rice production according to technical processes and smart use of fertilizers minimizes environmental pollution, helping farmers reduce the amount of seeds, fertilizers, and labor adapting to current climate change.
Many farmers excitedly said that using smart fertilizers yields about 1 ton per 0.1296 ha. Due to the use of smart fertilizers in rice cultivation, farmers are less strenuous due to saving labor while improving productivity and the quality of rice seeds is guaranteed, especially reducing the need to spread fertilizer, reducing pests and diseases, hardening plants, and less falling.
The lifetime of monitoring buoy usage is longer and of better quality than foreign-made sensors. Moreover, the oxygen shrimp model recently studied by Mr. My has just been applied in Tra Vinh and many other provinces, helping people access modern shrimp farming techniques, saving land and water resources, electricity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, especially increasing output and reducing production costs compared to traditional shrimp farming.
As of 2016, Mr. Nguyen Thanh My has founded and co-founded 8 businesses, of which 6 businesses operate in Tra Vinh province such as RYNAN Smart Fertilizers Company Limited, RYNAN AgriFoods Joint Stock Company, RYNAN Technologies Joint Stock Company Vietnam, Mylan Optical Electronics Joint Stock Company, My Lan Printing Materials Manufacturing Company Limited, My Lan Joint Stock Company.
He used to win the title of Outstanding Vietnamese Entrepreneur in 2008. Moreover, he has been bestowed an award from the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry and certificates of merit from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry and Trade in 2004, 2005, 2006 and from the People's Committee of Tra Vinh province in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. He also grabbed the Gold Award for Innovative Technology awarded by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 2002, the Gold Award for efficient production technology awarded by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in 2004 and the Silver Advanced Technology Award from Dainippon Ink and Chemicals Company (Japan) in 1997. The US Sun Chemical Company presented him with the Invention Achievement Award in 1995 and 1996.
