Boldly starting a business with the first interactive technology: Virtual Reality Ten years ago, after a long time studying in the UK, receiving an invitation to return home to participate in a rather interesting project, young man Nguyen The Duy decided to give up his job in the "foggy country". "With the experience and perspective accumulated in the UK, I felt that I should do something more useful for my country. At that time, I thought that the Vietnamese market had more opportunities to do more breakthrough things than staying in the UK", Nguyen The Duy explained his decision to return home with some brothers to form a start-up group. Researching a number of projects on finance, technology, and communications in Vietnam at that time, Nguyen The Duy realized that the domestic market seemed to lack experience related to technology in communications for businesses.
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Mr. Nguyen The Duy, Vice President of ADT Global Technology Joint Stock Company.

“Having been educated in interactive technology in London, and wanting to bring new technologies back to the country for application, I decided to establish a company to realize my wish. ADT was established in 2015, in which A stands for Advance, D for Digital, and T for Tech. Initially, we did not set any great mission, simply thinking that the new market had a lot of “land” for us to develop many new things with high efficiency and feasibility. The goal at that time was just to help Vietnamese businesses convey messages about their products and services to their customers in a more intuitive and understandable way thanks to technology,” said Mr. Duy. Since its inception, the ADT team has determined that the company's "DNA" is always focused on breakthrough innovative technologies such as virtual reality (VR, AR), and in recent years, virtual universe (Metaverse), artificial intelligence (AI). In the context of the concept of "virtual reality" being very new in Vietnam, the process of investing time, money, participating in events, and making showcases to convince customers to try it is very difficult. Finding personnel for the new industry is also a difficult task. Along with that, it is necessary to continuously research and develop (R&D) to optimize products that are both good and "affordable" for Vietnamese businesses. The first "sweet fruit" came to ADT by chance, in the style of "good wine needs no bush". “One fine day, Viettel Group contacted us. At that time, Viettel launched 4G, requiring new experiences and technologies that could clearly demonstrate the speed power of the 4G network. Viettel searched on Google for names of service providers and virtual reality technology, but after browsing 9 pages, they only saw foreign enterprises. On the 10th page, ADT appeared. This was the first “sweet fruit” that ADT received. We were very happy to be sought out by a large domestic enterprise. This was also an opportunity for us to spread new products and new technologies to the Vietnamese market,” Mr. Duy recalled. Looking back on the 10-year journey from a startup to the scale it is now (with members: ADT Creative, ADT Global, OneS, Labelless), many times under pressure, Mr. Duy drew out some “tips” to help the ADT team not give up easily. First of all, startups need to be well prepared. Before embarking on the path of entrepreneurship, one must anticipate a very harsh competitive environment. The necessary and sufficient conditions are not simply each idea but also the sum of many factors such as people, market, products, etc. Sometimes doing well is not enough, it also depends on luck and the right timing. In times of danger, the team needs to truly understand each other, be willing to sacrifice time, effort, personal joy for the collective, and be ready to "fight" for each other. Along with that, one must be truly persistent in overcoming difficulties. Sometimes everything is going very well, suddenly unexpected problems arise, one must understand that it is normal, accept it with a calm mind, be ready to face and overcome. “Just keep going, you will grow up, you will prove your products and reputation in the market, from there, good things will come to you naturally” – a philosophy of life formed from practice that seems very similar to the content of two books that Vice President Nguyen The Duy loves very much, which are “The Infinite Game” and “Lee Kuan Yew’s Memoirs – Volume 2: From the Third World to the First”. Combining dry logic with soaring creativity to create a competitive advantage Vice President Nguyen The Duy is always proud of the fact that ADT is a technology media company, doing both media and technology, like combining the left brain and the right brain, one side is logic, code… dry, the other side is creativity, soaring, and artistry. It is very difficult to combine like that, but ADT is determined to do it to bring an extremely “Wow” feeling to those who experience the product/service. Building a technology R&D team that meets requirements requires a lot of effort, ingenuity, and diverse perspectives. Sometimes there are still creative ideas that are beyond technological capabilities and cannot be done yet. However, with technology ideas that feel not really mature yet, but can be improved in the future, and bring great value, we must pursue them to the end. “I still remember the time we had a transaction related to the development of a coloring book application (app). At that time, only Disney in the world had this coloring book app. Everyone thought that Disney was a very large global corporation, had to invest a lot of money, how could a small Vietnamese startup like ADT do it. We convinced the team that if Disney could do it, we could do it too. And in the end, we did it. This success is also one of the motivations that helps ADT always try, make an effort, and trust the team to develop new technology,” Mr. Duy recounted the old story, his eyes shining with pride. Answering the question "What are the ADT technology products/solutions that you are most satisfied with?", Mr. Duy said: In addition to communication and marketing services, there are 4 products that ADT is developing that are achieving initial success.
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Digital human is one of ADT's outstanding product lines.

One is a product about artificial human (Digital human) with generative AI function (Generative AI), shaped like a human, and has the ability to communicate and interact like a real person, with many different expressions and states. ADT has brought this product to demonstrate in many places both domestically and internationally. The second is a core product about AI that processes language with extremely good response speed, recently ADT provided it to a customer to demonstrate at Gitex - one of the largest global technology events - and has been recognized by the world community. The third is a virtual universe product (Metaverse), which has developed into a form, people can enter to communicate and interact with each other. ADT currently plans to attach non-player AI characters (AI NPCs) to the Metaverse environment, with the ability to think for themselves and communicate flexibly, very useful for training activities. And the fourth is the XR virtual reality platform: including augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR); can run “all in one” right on the web without having to download the app. Previously, to view virtual reality content, users had to download a new application, which was considered a huge obstacle. Now, people just need to scan the QR code or go to the web link to easily experience virtual reality. According to Mr. Duy, ADT's technology products have many competitive advantages compared to domestic and international competitors. “With domestic units, we have added technology elements in the communication part, helping to increase the experience of users and customers of the business, when they use the services, they will have more emotions. Especially with international units, we have a very good advantage to compete on price when we have both software quality and high aesthetics and artistic quality, meeting very strict criteria,” Mr. Duy described in more detail the competitive advantages of his business. Proud of the Digital human product developed by Vietnamese people In recent days, the character Ha Vy - a product researched and developed by ADT and its member units - has been attracting the attention of the Vietnamese public. Ha Vy is the first AI Digital human in Vietnam, developed by ADT, and has just been officially launched at the Vietnam International Innovation Exhibition 2023 (VIIE 2023). To build Ha Vy, the AI ​​core was upgraded and integrated with a hyper-real Digital human, thereby creating the only AI Digital Human in Vietnam to date.
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Virtual person Ha Vy attracts the attention of the Vietnamese public.

Virtual human Ha Vy appears with a complete full-body shape, capable of deciding on her own expressions, body language and real-time conversation. In particular, AI Digital Human Ha Vy breaks many records in: Speech to text processing speed - 0.1 seconds for 50 words; Text to speech speed - under 2 seconds for 50 words; Ability to recognize context (context recognition) and achieve extremely fast response speed - 0.1 seconds to respond to 50 words according to context (average each word has 3 - 5 characters). In addition to the ability to communicate fluently in Vietnamese and process information quickly, Ha Vy can also proactively create content, self-study and provide answers when asked. Virtual people like Ha Vy are capable of participating in a series of advertising and sales activities such as: Customer care, self-service, video bots, KOLs, Models, AI MCs, AI Tour guides, brand ambassadors... even livestreaming sales 24/7 on multiple platforms. "Ha Vy is a product developed by the ADT team from creating images, building 3D models, expressions, responses... All digital-related content is handled by ADT. We are very proud of this Digital human developed by Vietnamese people", Mr. Duy emphasized. Sharing his feelings about Ha Vy, Mr. Le Khanh Hung, CEO of Aries Strategy said: "This is the first time I have experienced this technology and found it very advanced. I think my current customers also need such technology. It is not limited to KOLs or sales experience. Large corporations that are my customers really need automation technology and provide information at high frequency, civilized and professional. From the perspective of large corporations, this technology will save a lot of costs, create professionalism and uniformity across all their branches." Seizing the opportunity to export Vietnamese "brainpower" internationally Not long ago, ADT made an effort to bring virtual reality technology to children in schools, with the desire to spread new technology to children - those who lay the foundation for the future so that this technology becomes more popular. However, the company's scale is still modest, bringing technology to children takes a lot of time and effort, so ADT has temporarily suspended this activity to focus on R&D and business activities, aiming to bring Vietnamese technology products to the world. Currently, the company still has a number of cooperation programs with domestic universities and high schools on career guidance for students. "Not only collaborating with large Vietnamese enterprises, ADT Global also "joins hands" with many large international enterprises such as Intel, Meta, STE, Surbana Jurong, G42, ... We have provided Digital human products to a number of international markets such as Korea, Singapore, the US, UAE, ... and recently a number of enterprises in other countries have expressed interest, ADT is researching to expand foreign markets", said Mr. Duy. Assessing the development potential of interactive technology, Vice President Nguyen The Duy expressed: “Interactive technology or technology communication is an inevitable trend. I think it is also an opportunity for Vietnam to export its “gray matter” internationally, to step forward into the world. With good human resources, increasingly standardized professionalism, meeting reasonable cost requirements, Vietnam can develop products, provide services to the world with quality not inferior to that of major countries”.
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According to Mr. Duy, Vietnam has many advantages in developing applications related to Digital human and AI.

Mr. Duy noted that Vietnam has many advantages in developing applications related to Digital human, AI in many industries such as agriculture, healthcare, urban management, etc. Vietnam has a relatively large population, popular Internet, affordable prices, many people are good at math, and there are many incentives to promote the development of technology and innovative products. What Vietnamese businesses need to do is seize the opportunity to rise up. Currently, ADT is continuing to research, perfect, and optimize its products. Digital human will be one of the key highlights of this Vietnamese enterprise in 2024. Envisioning the "Make in Vietnam" technology products researched and developed by ADT in the next 5 and 10 years, Mr. Duy expects: "The world will know Vietnam as a country that provides high-quality products, ensuring criteria in terms of image, experience as well as internal performance. Focusing on breakthrough technologies such as virtual reality, virtual universe, artificial intelligence, etc., ADT Global is ready to join the race in the flat world". Before ending the story, we asked more about the biggest aspiration of the "boss" of ADT, Mr. Duy happily "revealed": "I always want people around me to live happily, happily and most comfortably. The people around me are happy, I am happy. That was my biggest wish when I decided to return home to start a business and it is still the same now".

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