Three unicorns, one city
VNG, MoMo and Sky Mavis were all founded in Ho Chi Minh City. You spend your term inside the generation of companies coming after them.
Locations / Southeast Asia
Ho Chi Minh City
Spend three or six months inside a Ho Chi Minh City startup while taking a course at VNU-HCM International University. Every company Vietnam is known for started here.
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Partner uni
VNU-HCM International University
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Intake
August January -
Audience
Undergraduates only
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Ecosystem
Emerging markets -
Cohort size
~25 students per intake
About Ho Chi Minh City
Rearrange your view of normal.
Vietnam has three technology companies worth over a billion dollars and all three were founded here. VNG built Zalo, the messaging app most of the country uses. MoMo turned a phone into a bank account for people who had never had one. Sky Mavis reached a three billion dollar valuation three years after starting. Half of Vietnam's startups are in this city, along with more than a hundred venture funds.
What makes the market interesting is that most of it skipped a step. A hundred million people went from cash to phone payments without passing through cheque books and desktop banking, so the products here were designed for that from the start rather than adapted to it. You spend your term inside a company selling to people whose first computer was a phone.
Three months is short and your work starts immediately, because startups operating at this pace have nobody spare to ease you in with. You will be working in a city of ten million that runs on motorbikes and does not slow down for anyone.
Why Ho Chi Minh City?
Vietnam has 100m people and half the startups are here.
Classes at VNU-HCM
You take an entrepreneurship course at VNU-HCM while the internship runs. Two of your eighteen NOC units come from it,
Three months or six
Three months, one internship, and back for the next semester. It is the shortest way into NOC and the only one that fits inside a break.
Partner university
VNU-HCM International University
You take a course on entrepreneurship at VNU-HCM International University part-time while the internship runs. Two of your eighteen NOC units come from it. The other sixteen come from the job.
This is the only public university in Vietnam that teaches everything in English. It opened in 2003, and it was built specifically to produce graduates who could work globally.
3 months in Ho Chi Minh City
What our students say
Being part of the NOC Silicon Valley program was truly an enriching experience for me. It provided the perfect environment to immerse myself in the fast-paced world of startups, where I had the chance to work at an AI startup surrounded by some of the most innovative minds in the industry. This hands-on experience not only sharpened my technical skills but also gave me a deeper understanding of the challenges and intricacies involved in building and scaling a startup. Being enrolled at Stanford University greatly broadened my perspective on global business and entrepreneurship.
Being part of the NOC Silicon Valley program was truly an enriching experience for me. It provided the perfect environment to immerse myself in the fast-paced world of startups, where I had the chance to work at an AI startup surrounded by some of the most innovative minds in the industry. This hands-on experience not only sharpened my technical skills but also gave me a deeper understanding of the challenges and intricacies involved in building and scaling a startup. Being enrolled at Stanford University greatly broadened my perspective on global business and entrepreneurship.
Lee Jun Liang
NOC Silicon Valley Alumnus | Aug 2023 Intake NUS Business School | BBA
Lee Jun Liang
NOC Silicon Valley Alumnus | Aug 2023 Intake NUS Business School | BBA
Practical info
The things you'll need to know before committing to Ho Chi Minh City.
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Cost of living [ $ ]
SGD1,200 a month
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Accommodation
NOC supports housing search.
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Stipend & awards
Most students receive an internship stipend from their host company. NOC awards available via Awards & Scholarships
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Visa
Vietnamese student visa. NOC covers the full application cost
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Language
English Vietnamese -
Climate
Tropical Dry And Wet Seasons -
Time zone
UTC +7 -
Getting around
Motorbikes, buses, and a new metro line.
Curriculum at Thailand
Faculty-mapped courses for NOC Ho Chi Minh City: units, intakes, and academic structure.
All three are submitted via myEduRec → External Study Online Application → Program Application → Supporting Document, before the application deadline.
NOC may withdraw your application if any are missing.
Apply for NOC Ho Chi Minh City
Rank Ho Chi Minh City in your application. Note that NOC reserves the right to assign you to any available location regardless of stated preference.
Start your application