'Everyone laughed at me': How a street vendor's son became Vietnam tycoon

Tai opened his first such outlet in Ho Chi Minh City in 2016, selling vegetables, meat and fish with clearly labeled origins, and other essential items such as noodles and drinks

When Nguyen Duc Tai, the son of a street vendor, said he was going to revolutionize Vietnam’s mobile phone industry, few people gave it a second thought.

“Everybody laughed at me,” says Tai of that time in 2009.

But Tai was true to this word. His Mobile World Investment Corp. became the country’s top seller of mobile phones and one of the biggest listed stocks. The company now has a market value of $1.7 billion.

So when Tai said that he was going to overhaul the country’s food industry, this time people listened.

“The future of groceries is very clear,” a t-shirted Tai, 49,