In Hanoi, Ngoc Ha took a steady approach to growth, with the speed to seize the right moment.
Every month, without exception, Ngoc Ha pays her employees on the 10th. Supplier balances are settled in full at the end of each month. Customers get honest advice, even when the honest answer costs a sale.
“I always put trustworthiness first,” she says. “In 15 years of doing business, I have never had any scandal related to finances or credibility.”
That reputation is the foundation of Star Vietnam Global Electrical Appliances Joint Stock Company, which supplies agricultural, construction and fisheries equipment in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, with a stable workforce of 15 to 20 employees. And it’s made the difference when the hard moments came.
Luong studied accounting and found her way into business through an internship that turned into a sales accountant position. Working in sales gave her a feel for the market, for what customers needed and how supply chains worked. Over time, she realized she understood the business well enough to build one of her own.
What she built, she built carefully. No shortcuts, no overreach. From the beginning, she kept the business within what she understood, reinvested consistently and treated every relationship, with employees, suppliers, and customers, as something worth protecting.
“I choose safe growth because rapid wealth often comes with high risks. Financial safety, to me, means financial freedom.”
Ngoc Ha
When COVID-19 hit, she moved operations entirely online, kept her team on full base salaries while working from home, and held them to their sales targets, with no layoffs.
Four years ago, needing working capital, she worked with VPBank, which moved quickly, valuing her assets in a single session, delivering her funds within days. That speed was the result of a deliberate effort. In partnership with Strive Women, a Mastercard Strive program led by CARE, VPBank had redesigned how it serves women entrepreneurs, building products and services around the realities they face: working capital on practical terms, processes that do not require weeks of back-and-forth, and digital tools that fit how a business actually runs day to day.
Those tools are at the center of how Luong manages the company. Payments, supplier balances and cash flow run through VPBank’s digital banking platforms, accessible from her phone or computer. What once required manual cash counting and paper records is now visible in real time.
She keeps reserve funds to cover operations when customers delay payment. She evaluates every loan against what the business genuinely needs and typically repays 10-year loans within two to five years.
“I choose safe growth because rapid wealth often comes with high risks,” she says. “Financial safety, to me, means financial freedom.”
By Andrea Durán, Communications Manager for Women’s Entrepreneurship at CARE