In 2019, Southeast Asia was in the middle of a full-blown obsession with technology. Foreign capital was pouring into digital platforms and startups built around the promise of “digitizing everything.” In that environment, trying to raise capital for a brick-and-mortar clinic chain seemed completely out of step with the market.
Yet the success of Nhi Đồng 315 has proven to be far more than just a compelling investment story. It reveals a deeper truth about Vietnam’s economic reality and exposes some of the most important bottlenecks the country will need to solve in the years ahead.
In this week’s episode of Business Insights on Vietsuccess, Alex sat down with Zig Wronski, Founder of Tremont Capital, to unpack this contrarian investment thesis and discuss what it tells us about Vietnam’s next phase of economic growth. Here are the key insights.
1. The Technology Illusion and the Reality of Brick-and-Mortar Businesses
During the 2019–2020 period, convincing investors to back a clinic chain like Nhi Đồng 315 was extremely difficult. Venture capital funds viewed the business as too traditional, while larger private equity funds wanted immediate profitability metrics such as EBITDA. At the time Zig first looked at the business, it had only three clinics, and all three were temporarily closed because of COVID-19.
However, experience from the U.S. market — including cases like Teladoc — had already exposed a critical weakness in purely online healthcare models. Modern medicine is evidence-based, which means diagnosis often depends on imaging, lab testing, and physical examination.
You cannot examine an ear infection or draw blood through a mobile app.
The real challenge in healthcare is not building an app or a website — especially in Vietnam, where creating digital products is relatively low-cost and accessible. The real complexity lies in the intersection between online and offline operations: recruiting doctors, obtaining licenses, managing pharmacy networks, and building a trusted physical care system.
The market has since shown that many health-tech companies, after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, eventually had to return to opening physical clinics. Meanwhile, Nhi Đồng 315 has grown to more than 200 clinics nationwide.
Sometimes the strongest barrier to entry is not software. It is the operational infrastructure — the bricks, mortar, and execution discipline that the market initially overlooks.
2. Vietnam’s “Speed-Run” Against Automation
Looking at the broader macro picture, Vietnam is standing at a critical crossroads in its effort to move beyond the middle-income trap.
The traditional path followed by many North Asian economies — moving from agriculture to manufacturing, then services, and eventually to a knowledge-based economy — is now under serious pressure from automation. The advantage of low-cost labor is becoming less meaningful when robots can replace factory workers and AI tools can perform tasks once handled by call centers.
Vietnam no longer has the luxury of moving through this development path slowly.
The country is now forced into a kind of economic speed-run — accelerating through multiple stages of development before technology removes the ladder entirely. This is no longer a theoretical issue. It is a strategic urgency.
3. Vietnam’s Growth Equation: Where Is the Real Answer?
The government has set an ambitious target of 10% economic growth. But if we break GDP into its four core components, it becomes clear that each part faces real structural limits.
Consumption
Consumer demand remains weak. One simple way to see this is that there are no long lines forming outside Lamborghini showrooms. High-end discretionary spending is not exactly booming.
Government Spending
The government is already pushing hard on infrastructure, and this remains an important growth driver. But major projects such as airports, roads, and industrial infrastructure require years of approvals and construction. These timelines cannot simply be compressed overnight.
Net Exports
Vietnam’s trade surplus with the United States has already reached a very significant scale relative to GDP. There is limited room to keep stretching this lever indefinitely without facing geopolitical and economic constraints.
Investment
That leaves one variable with the greatest remaining potential to drive the next phase of growth: investment.
4. The Bottleneck in Domestic Capital Allocation
If Vietnam wants investment to become the main engine of growth, it cannot rely only on foreign capital — especially at a time when global investors are still heavily focused on AI-related opportunities in the United States.
The more urgent challenge is unlocking domestic savings.
In the U.S., individuals can easily deploy their savings into the economy through ETFs and public equities, investing in companies such as Tesla or Nvidia. In Vietnam, the investment menu for individuals remains limited. Most people still rotate between bank deposits and different versions of real estate exposure.
As a result, many Vietnamese households continue to park wealth in physical gold or land. But these are often forms of dormant capital. Gold stored at home does not directly finance productive businesses, and land speculation does not necessarily support long-term industrial competitiveness.
This is why developing a stronger capital market is not optional — it is essential.
Yes, corporate governance issues and fraud risk remain real concerns. But these risks exist in every market, including highly developed ones. The answer is not to avoid building capital markets. The answer is to create a stock market with higher-quality listed companies, stronger governance standards, and better investor access.
That is how Vietnam can begin channeling household savings out of safes and into productive sectors of the economy.
Look Beyond the Surface
This article only scratches the surface of what Alex and Zig Wronsky explored in the studio.
The deeper discussion — including how Tremont Capital uses special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to selectively invest in individual opportunities, and how foreign funds assess governance and fraud risk in Vietnam — is covered in the full podcast.
If you would like to watch the full conversation between Alex and Zig, you can access it here
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