Deadline: 15 August 2025
Shinhan Square Bridge Viet Nam – Social Open Innovation is a project that applies cutting-edge technologies from promising startups, solves critical social challenges in Vietnam’s Education and Agriculture sectors, and enables local market entry and scaling operations in Southeast Asia.
Social Open Innovation Challenges
- Digital Solutions for Youth Career Navigation and Mental Resilience
- Solutions that provide Al-based career counseling, gamified job exploration, and data-based career matching platforms.
- Mental health support platforms that simultaneously inte-grate Al chatbots, P2P support networks, and digital
- Expanding STEAM and STEM education in Vietnam
- Low-cost, low-tech solutions to reach areas with poor education infrastructure.
- Educational resources, teacher training programs, and scalable digital learning platforms.
- Automating the assessment process and enhancing English as a Second Language (ESL) leaming and expanding foreign language leaming for job preparation
- Automated tools for real-time assessment, personalized feedback, and immersive learning experiences.
- Al-based speech recognition, smart grading systems, and interactive language applications.
- Cost-effective foreign language learning platform that can meet diverse learning needs from students to adults.
- Al-based personalized learning, interactive content plat-forms, and low-cost blended learning model solutions.
- Tech Solutions to enhance classroom digitalization (Audiovisual & Virtual Reality (VR) to Maximize Student Potential
- Solutions that enhance students’ participation in class and improve sound and visual quality by developing audiovisual technologies for classroom digitalization.
- VR and immersive experiential learning, simulation-based education, and interactive educational content
- Low-cost VR tools, seamless content integration, and adaptive leaming solutions for a variety of learning styles and cognitive abilities
- Reduction of environmental emissions and agricultural production loss through smart, circular, and data-driven solutions
- Technologies that can solve agricultural production loss problems by introducing precision agriculture, Al-based harvesting solutions, and blockchain-based tracking solutions.
- Solutions that can contribute to creating a circular economy model by upcycling agricultural byproducts into bioenergy, organic fertilizers, and sustainable materials.
- Improvement of agricultural food preservation and processing infrastructure
- Smart refrigeration systems, Al-based supply chain optimization, and sustainable food packaging/processing solutions.
- Reduction of agricultural waste generation and preservation of freshness of agricultural products through loT-based monitoring, bio-preservation technologies, and distributed logistics hubs.
- Improving the value of biochar and efficient use
- Solutions to cost-effectively convert agricultural residues into biochar and enhance the use of biochar beyond its traditional uses
- Collaboration with farmers, policymakers and industry is critical to integrating biochar into sustainable agriculture and energy systems.
Benefits
- Comprehensive Market Entry Mentorship
- Personalized 1:1 mentoring for product/service localization
- Facilitated business meetings with Vietnamese partners
- Local PoC Grant Funding
- $10,000 Proof of Concept grant for participating companies
- Additional scaling grants for top-performing ventures
- Viet Nam Scale-up Support
- Pitching opportunities at Demo Day (attended by investors and government stakeholders)
- Investor matchmaking and partnership facilitation with
- Vietnamese partner companies
Target Applicants
- Vietnamese startups interested in expanding their presence in the domestic market that seek to solve social challenges in Viet Nam’s Education and Agriculture sectors through cross-sector collaboration.
Eligibility Criteria
- Domestic startups incorporated within the past 7 years meeting ≥1 requirement:
- Possessing clearly defined problems and innovative solutions (e.g., well-articulated problem statements with technological superiority or unique business models vs. existing solutions)
- Demonstrating validated market traction (e.g., MVP deployment, beta test results, or early-user feedback with objective metrics)
- Featuring team members with exceptional execution capabilities and domain expertise
- Holding substantiated global growth strategies (e.g., user acquisition roadmaps or scalable international expansion plans)
For more information, visit Vietnam Living Lab.
