‘Bean Sprout Doctor’ turns intellectual property into money

The information was shared by Dr. Do Ngoc Chung, Comprehensive Energy Solutions Company Limited, at the conference “Connecting intellectual property rights holders on the IPPlatform platform with subjects of the innovation and startup ecosystem in the Northern region”, organized by the Institute of Intellectual Property Science (Ministry of Science and Technology) on July 3.

Dr. Chung (44 years old) said that scientific results only have real meaning and value when they are applied and accepted by the market. However, not many people know how to turn intellectual property into products, creating money for the author and profit for the business. Known as a successful startup with many useful products, Mr. Chung shared his practical experience on the journey to increase the value of bean sprouts to earn hundreds of billions of dong in profit.

The idea of ​​creating a bean sprout growing device started in 2013 with the desire to produce clean bean sprouts and eliminate the use of chemicals. Unlike bean sprout making devices on the market, Dr. Chung’s product is fully automatic and does not use electricity. The device is also designed with good air convection to increase oxygen concentration, release CO2 and temperature faster, producing cleaner, tastier bean sprouts.

At first, when he brought the clean bean sprout incubator to raise capital, he was “shaken off” because his research was small and did not have investment. To be free to experiment with new research, the young scientist founded a company pursuing the business direction of producing bean sprout making equipment for households. After only 3 years, the company had a revenue of several tens of billions of VND.

He tried every way to bring the product to market by improving the scale of equipment and marketing the researched product himself. “If you don’t rely on technology and innovation, when the product is saturated in the market, the business will die,” he said. This is the reason why Dr. Chung continues to research and launch new products such as kimchi sprouts, green bean hull tea or kombucha, all of which are made from clean bean sprouts. Creating more valuable products and meeting customer needs helps increase the value of goods exponentially, bringing in billions in profits.

Currently, Dr. Chung’s technology and intellectual property are available on the IPPlatform (industrial property data and service platform). He said that “as soon as the device was released to the market, there were 5 counterfeit units”, so he recommended registering for protection to “protect yourself”. The “Bean Sprouts Doctor” also suggested registering intellectual property as soon as you have an idea, analyze market potential, to create a premise for testing and commercializing the product. In addition, it is necessary to connect implementing units and flexibly market the product.

At the conference, experts and scientists from research institutes and universities also shared their experiences in identifying intellectual property for start-up activities. Activities to support incubation and investment for innovative start-up businesses, transfer of knowledge, technology and scientific products were also mentioned.

Acknowledging the comments, Dr. Ta Quang Minh, Director of the Institute of Intellectual Property Science (Ministry of Science and Technology), said that the conference connected intellectual property rights holders on the IPPlatform platform with incubators, startup support centers, businesses, and investments in the innovative startup ecosystem. In addition, it received requests for startup consulting and intellectual property protection.

Dr. Minh said that IPPlatform provides information related to intellectual property objects that are being registered and protected in Vietnam. Thereby, it helps to connect to bring intellectual property into business activities. He highly appreciated the opinions at the workshop, emphasizing that connecting intellectual property rights holders with businesses and incubators will help to best exploit intellectual property, promote commercialization, and value intellectual property.