CEO behind the advertising network of 25 million users: "What I’m doing is not about making lots of money or becoming famous"

AWING is a tech startup founded in 2017 in Vietnam, developing an advertising distribution platform that delivers brand messages to users through free Wi-Fi login screens. The startup creatively applied the sharing economy model to build a large-scale media channel that meets the growing demand for location-based marketing (LBM).

We met with AWING’s CEO, Nguyễn Tiến Dũng, just a few days after the startup signed an investment deal with NTT (Japan), the world’s 4th largest telecom and IT corporation. This deal provides a strong foundation for the company’s platform—which displays ads through free Wi-Fi login screens—to expand internationally.

“AWING partnered with a major Japanese corporation because we want to go global,” said Nguyễn Tiến Dũng, talking about receiving external funding for the first time after 8 years of entrepreneurship.

– How did your startup journey begin?

After graduating from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, I had the chance to work for IBM Japan. At that time, I was working on something that everyone is buzzing about now—semiconductors. The job was good, the salary was high, but for some reason I wanted to quit after a while, because I felt that what I was doing couldn’t really be brought back to Vietnam. In my head, I always asked myself: whatever I do, can I bring it back home?

Later, I received a scholarship in South Korea to study telecommunications. After finishing my studies, I considered pursuing further education, but I decided instead to return to Vietnam, join a leading domestic HR-tech company, and explore the industry.

At that time, I realized most local companies didn’t talk about innovation culture, whereas the international companies I had worked for emphasized it a lot. So, I quit and started my own business with some friends I studied with in Korea. We tried to build a digital content distribution platform with videos—something like YouTube today—but back then, we didn’t have the strength, technology, or market. It failed. All the money I had saved up over the years was gone. (laughs)

Then I went back to working for others to earn money, and later I started again with AWING—the advertising model based on Wi-Fi.

– Why did you think of developing an advertising platform through free Wi-Fi?

Around 2012–2013, everyone knew smartphones would be the future, so I started looking into everything related to them. Wi-Fi caught my attention the most. Many people thought Wi-Fi was ordinary, but in reality, it’s very important. This infrastructure grows together with 4G and 5G networks.

So, I tried to connect Wi-Fi, smartphones, and real-world life. That’s when the ideas about location-based marketing began to form. Actually, I looked into many things at the time, but I wasn’t interested in gaming, and fintech or e-commerce felt too ambitious.

The more I researched, the more I saw a massive demand for location-based advertising. LCD screens and standees were outdated—there needed to be something new, something more personal and connected to people. Some companies tried to offer solutions targeting individual users at specific locations, but they weren’t effective.

Our idea was completely different: focus on building a software platform that aggregates scattered Wi-Fi systems into a large, standardized, unified network. This platform would form a massive advertising network, enabling brands to reach the right target customers at specific locations with clear consumer behaviors.

We don’t sell software solutions. Instead, we build a new media channel and create revenue for existing Wi-Fi owners through a sharing economy model. In short, we are an advertising network operating on free Wi-Fi—but we don’t own a single Wi-Fi device ourselves. Looking around, I don’t think this model exists anywhere else yet.