Editor’s note: In recent years, Vietnam was celebrated as Southeast Asia’s rising star—a high-growth market fueled by a young, mobile-first population, strong developer talent, and rapid consumer adoption. Today, that story is shifting from potential to maturity.
Over the past few weeks, TNGlobal published an exclusive series of conversations with venture capitalists, ecosystem builders, startups founders. Whether you are an investor looking for the next growth driver in ASEAN, a founder scaling in the region, or an industry observer, this series offers a grounded, ground-level look into Vietnam’s digital economy.
Stride‘s spot on Forbes Asia’s “100 to Watch” 2026 capped a fast rise for a company which is betting that Vietnam’s solar revolution will be won on balance sheets, not rooftops. Founded in 2021 and led by CEO Andrew Fairthorne, the Ho Chi Minh City startup runs an integrated solar solutions platform that lets households and small businesses own rooftop solar for a small upfront payment, spread over time. In May, it raised a $15 million Series B co-led by Lightrock and TRIREC.
In an interview with TNGlobal for the Discover Vietnam Tech series, Fairthorne discussed why finance professionals are investing in solar, how rooftop power fits into Vietnam’s energy grid, and the largely untapped market for surplus electricity.
What stands out is Fairthorne’s measured approach: even as Vietnam allows homeowners to sell surplus power back to the grid, he sees it as an added benefit, not yet the foundation of a profitable business case.
Below are the edited excerpts:
Stride’s expertise is rooted more in finance than engineering, yet you operate in a highly tech-driven industry. How has that background benefited you so far?
We saw that the biggest barrier to solar adoption was not the technology. Panels already worked, costs were falling, and Vietnam has excellent solar potential. The real barriers are affordability, trust, and access to capital.
Our finance background led us to approach solar as both an energy product and a financial asset. We understand how to structure payment plans, assess risk, and mobilize capital, so that households and businesses can adopt solar without carrying the full upfront cost.
That does not make engineering secondary. Our real advantage is bringing finance, technology, data and engineering together into one accessible customer experience.
In many ways, Stride is not trying to invent a better solar panel; we are building a better way for people to adopt solar.
Vietnam wants half of its buildings to have rooftop solar by 2030. What excites you most about that goal and what worries you?
What excites me is the scale of the ambition. Rooftop solar lets households and businesses take part directly in Vietnam’s energy transition. It can lower electricity costs and make the energy system more distributed and resilient.
My concern is that targets alone do not create adoption. Customers still need affordable payment options, consistent regulation, reliable installers, and confidence that their systems will perform for 20 years or more. Grid readiness and transparent procedures for connecting to the grid and selling excess electricity matter just as much.
The opportunity is enormous, but success should not be measured only by the number of panels installed. It should be measured by system quality, energy actually used, customer savings, and long-term performance. Vietnam needs rapid deployment, but it also needs responsible deployment.
Solar is nearly 11 percent of Vietnam’s power capacity but only 8 percent of actual output, while coal and hydropower still dominate. Can rooftop solar really ease Vietnam’s energy challenges at the macro level, or is it better suited to households and small businesses?
Rooftop solar is not a replacement for the national grid or utility-scale generation, but it can make a meaningful contribution at the macro level.
Its strength is that electricity is produced close to where it is consumed. A factory, warehouse, or household using solar during the day reduces the amount of electricity that must be generated and carried through the wider system. Across hundreds of thousands of rooftops, that becomes significant, particularly as Vietnam’s electricity demand keeps growing.
That said, solar is variable, so it has to be combined with grid investment, storage, flexible demand, and other energy sources.
I would describe rooftop solar as a highly practical part of the solution: it creates immediate savings for individual customers while collectively easing pressure on national generation and infrastructure. It is complementary, but far from marginal.
Vietnam now allows households to sell up to half of their rooftop solar generation back to the grid, but adoption remains very limited. From Stride’s perspective, is this primarily an engineering challenge that can be solved through technology, or does the bigger unlock require broader reforms to Vietnam’s power market? And what would you honestly advise a customer looking to invest in rooftop solar today?
We can help customers optimize within the current system, but no private company can engineer its way around an unclear market structure. The larger unlock requires transparent connection procedures, predictable pricing and a power market that gives distributed energy resources a clearer role.
What Stride can do today is design each system around the customer’s real self-consumption profile, rather than simply fitting the maximum number of panels onto the roof. We can also pair solar with battery storage where a customer has significant evening demand, needs backup power, or can earn a sensible return from storing daytime generation.
Our honest advice is to build the economics around self-consumption, not on the assumption that you will earn significant income from selling excessive electricity to the grid.
That sales should be treated as a bonus until the process becomes more predictable. A properly sized system can already deliver attractive savings today, while batteries are best assessed case by case rather than added automatically.
Vietnam has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, while EV adoption is accelerating. How confident are you that this momentum can be sustained over the long term?
The direction is dependable, even if the pace will not always be linear. Vietnam’s electricity demand is growing, businesses face rising pressure to decarbonize, and electric vehicles are creating a new category of household and commercial power consumption. These trends reinforce one another.
Solar-powered EV charging is a compelling opportunity. A household or business could generate electricity during the day, store it when it makes sense, and use it to charge a vehicle, cutting both electricity and transport costs. For commercial customers, there are further opportunities around workplace charging, delivery fleets and charging infrastructure at retail or hospitality sites.
For Stride, the opportunity is broader than installing panels. It is about helping customers manage an increasingly connected energy system, all supported by accessible payment solutions and performance data.
You have raised Series A and Series B funding from impact funds, VCs, and corporate investors. Is there still a place for an old-fashioned bank loan?
We have learned that different forms of capital suit different stages and purposes. Venture capital can support technology, talent and rapid expansion. Impact investors bring a strong focus on measurable environmental and social outcomes. Corporate investors can contribute sector knowledge, networks and strategic capabilities.
The most valuable investors do more than provide money; they understand the time horizon of the energy sector and help the company grow responsibly.
There is absolutely still a role for bank lending. In fact, as the business and its portfolio mature, debt becomes increasingly important. Equity is well suited to funding innovation and company growth, while bank loans and other forms of debt can efficiently finance predictable, income-generating solar assets.
The goal is not to choose between venture capital and traditional lending. It is to build the right capital structure for each stage of the company and each type of asset.
You’ve just been named to Forbes Asia’s “100 to Watch.” What does that recognition mean to you and the team, and what milestone are you hoping to achieve next?
It is a meaningful recognition, because it validates the work of our entire team and the potential of Vietnam’s clean-energy ecosystem. Our employees, installation partners, investors and customers have all helped build a model that makes solar and battery storage more accessible.
But we see the recognition as encouragement rather than a finish line. The milestone we want people to watch is our ability to turn access into measurable impact at scale: more households and businesses adopting clean energy, real reductions in their electricity costs, and consistently high-performing systems across Vietnam.
By 2030, we aim to help clean energy reach more than 200,000 people. Ultimately, we want Stride to show that climate impact and commercial success can reinforce each other, and that a company built in Vietnam can create an energy-access model relevant across Southeast Asia.
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