I-Star 2021 welcomes several promising innovative startup models

The Ho Chi Minh City Innovation and Startup Awards 2021 (I-Star 2021) after 5 months launching has entered the final stage with 40 projects to seek the most effective, practical innovative startup models and solutions, boosting general startup activities in the city.

Perspective of the carousel parking system in the e-Parking project


One prominent project in the category of innovative startup business is BUTL – a service to provide immediate drivers for those owning a car via an app on a smart device. This service brings more convenience to customers in their human resources designation and money saving as they do not need to hire a full-time driver.

Another remarkable project is 3-Parking – the solution for smart parking of cars and pickup trucks with either a carousel parking system having different designs for different vehicle types or a Tor parking system having a large capacity. The solution is based on a technological platform developed by e-Parking Group. Via this platform, users can easily find an available parking space. All systems in the solution can automatically receive and return vehicles via their face recognition technology, fingerprint sensor, OTP codes.

Other innovative solutions are HomeOffers – a technological financial platform to help people purchase a house, JobWay – an app for job consultation and guidance.

The organization board of I-Star 2021 stated that this year, there are many sponsors willing to help the startup community.

For instance, Saigon Hi-tech Park Incubation Center (SHTP-IC) successfully aided 22 businesses to obtain the certificate for a science-technology enterprise and 110 intellectual property right registrations, 60 of which gaining the certificate. SHTP-IC has formed a network of over 100 experts and 30 international as well as national partners to provide consultation and services for innovative startup projects.

The venture fund Expara Vietnam - Leading Venture Creation, thanks to its 20-year experience of training and consulting startups globally, has also greatly contributed to supporting the startup community in Vietnam.

Launched for the fourth time, I-Star Awards has been considered a prestigious award among the innovative startup community of HCMC due to its practicality, usefulness, and contribution to the society.

Selection of the outstanding projects is based on the voting of social network users in the preliminary round before letting renowned judges provide their comments and evaluation. Excellent projects are frequently updated on I-Star official website to be quickly spread and shared on social networks, catching more attention from the public.

The awards ceremony is planned to be held in the ‘Week for HCMC Innovation, Start-ups and Entrepreneurship 2021’ (WHISE 2021) to deliver prizes to 12 winners in four contest categories.

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