The Chairman

Mr.Tran Ba Duong was born on April, 01, 1960 in Hue city, Thua Thien Hue province. His family moved to live in Da lat city when he was only one year old. He spent his childhood in a difficult time when the country has just gained independence; his father died at his very young age, therefore his mother had to work hard to afford his sibling’s education. After graduation from HCM Polytechnic University in dynamic mechanical major, he worked at auto repair fatory at Bien Hoa city, the most dynamic city of Viet nam in Dong Nai province.

Thanks to knowledge learned from school together with a passion for automobiles, he launched the project of “Right-hand drive conversion” which was ratified by the Ministry of Transport. Then, his company assigned him to supervise a mobile repair team working on contract. Consequently, he had the chance to collect and promote his ability.

After a couple of years, he bravely left his job and opened a small garage to earn a living, study and nurture his dream of producing and assembling automobiles in Vietnam. Being assessed to have high prestige in business, his garage became bigger every day. When truck line-ups of Korea came into Vietnam offering more new chances, he decided to join in the market with the first move which was to import used vehicles, renewed and released them into the market.

1997 was the starting year for his dream to go through the realization process. He opened a company named Truong Hai specializing in repairing and purchasing automobiles. Understanding the auto market, considering customer’s taste and realizing the fact that imported second-hand vehicles was no longer suitable for the current situation, he cooperated with Kia Corporation (Korea) to assemble Kia 2700 truck and Kia 3000 truck which were very popular in Vietnam at that time. Simultaneously, he decided to build an auto assembly plant at Bien Hoa – Dong Nai.

In 2003, in order to expand production scale of the company, he collected all financial and intellectual resources to build a factory in Chu Lai – Quang Nam, a vast sandy land with a harsh climate. With capability of an engineer together with many years of experience, he spent time on studying and improving many stages in the production line to suit functions of an auto assembly and production factory in Vietnam. Determining to create products of high quality, localization rate of Thaco-branded line-ups of trucks, dump trucks and buses so far accounts for 40%, which shows part of his dream to create Vietnamese products.

To be successful as today, it must first mention of the passion, braveness and sensibility of Mr. Tran Ba Duong together with solidarity, spirit, ambition, self-motivation, patience, and contribution of over 4000 employees of the company. In addition, these qualities are also a slogan to build the company’s brand name and business culture with the philosophy of showing morals to society and expressing capability to the country.

The next move of THACO and of his own is to cooperate with the world’s big corporations, then come to technology transfer period and self-production. His strategy proved to be successful in its first stages when Hyundai – Kia Corporation granted Thaco the Title of “The fastest growing distributor in the region” and KIA MOTORS selected Da Nang City – Viet Nam to hold “Asia-Pacific Kia Distributors Conference 2009” to discuss a cooperation plan with Thaco to make auto components in Vietnam, then transferring production technology such as Hyundai, Kia and other big auto corporations in Europe.

With the determination to make Thaco a “Vietnam-branded automaker”, Mr.Tran Ba Duong will continue to carry out long-term plans in the future.