Vietnam has produced quite a number of successful start-ups in mobile applications. While Malaysians are having walkathons, Vietnamese have their hackathons. ThereРІР‚в„ўre tons of incubators in Vietnam, mostly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city. Recently, VietnamРІР‚в„ўs Ministry of Science and TechnologyР’В has secured US$110 million to pump into Vietnamese start-ups in a project called FIRST, which will last from 2014 to 2019. In fact, Russian investors have played an increasingly significant role in VietnamРІР‚в„ўs startup ecosystem with big investments in search engines such as CocCocР’В and Wada, which both spent over US$15 million each in the last two years on securing VietnamРІР‚в„ўs search engine market. If that was not enough to insult MalaysiaРІР‚в„ўs MSC original initiative, Vietnam, a country which many BN politicians looked down upon not many moons ago, is quietly becoming an exciting technology start-up hub. According to Global Professionals on the Move 2013, Singapore comes in behind the US (1st) and the UK (2nd) in terms of its popularity as a digital hub.

Besides finance hub, Singapore is slowly emerging as a global technology hub leader. When Malaysia, under Barisan NasionalРІР‚в„ўs (BN) rule, was busy encouraging smart brains to migrate to China, India, Mars, Pluto, but welcoming unskilled foreigners from Indonesia and Bangladesh, the neighbouring countries are moving forward tremendously. If MSC needs 18-years to merely become regional support and data centres for international companies as of today, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to predict its new milestone by 2020. While the country can certainly achieve its Vision 2020 by a РІР‚СљSelf-ProclaimedРІР‚Сњ declaration (assuming the present regime will still rule by then) together with grand fireworks, lion dance, self-congratulatory advertisements on government-controlled media and whatnot, the same cannot be said about MSC. MSC was supposed to leapfrog the country into the 21st century by having an innovative and multimedia technology hub, similarly to Silicon Valley, and boost the objective of achieving MalaysiaРІР‚в„ўs Vision 2020 (a modern state by 2020). Besides Proton, MSC was another pet project by former prime minister Mahathir. MalaysiaРІР‚в„ўs Multimedia Super Corridor, popularly known as MSC in the 90s, will celebrate itРІР‚в„ўs 20th birthday in 2016 thatРІР‚в„ўs 2 years from now.

Coccoc hackathon