BK-Holdings — Hanoi University of Science and Technology's Public University Tech-Transfer Company

In March 2008, Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) received government approval to establish Bach Khoa Hanoi Technology Investment and Development Company — known as BK-Holdings — described by the university and Vietnamese press as one of the first university-run business entities of its kind in Vietnam. BK-Holdings coordinates a network reported by HUST as spanning 25 training and research institutions and around 150 research groups, managing on the order of 400 projects a year, to move HUST research toward industrial application.
The clearest documented transaction is a 2010 licensing agreement in which BK-Holdings transferred HUST's tricolour compact-fluorescent-powder technology to Rạng Đông Light Source and Vacuum Flask Company for VND 6.8 billion (about US$296,000) — reported at the time as a rare example of a Vietnamese university monetising in-house research at scale.
BK-Holdings has since diversified into venture support: its BK Fund raised close to VND 20 billion from HUST's alumni network ahead of a January 2021 launch, and the group reports having supported more than 100 startups and 500 mentors since inception. Vietnamese press coverage as recently as 2018 nonetheless described BK-Holdings as 'a rarity even now' among Vietnamese universities, attributing the slow spread of the model partly to universities' limited capital for spinning out equipment and facilities — a reminder that the approach, while real, has not yet been widely replicated domestically.

Read the full analysis: https://hust.edu.vn/en/research/latest-research-outputs/about-bk-holdings-555087.html