Media OutReach
8Wonder: Moments of Wonder: Where Music Pens the Spirit of a Flourishing Vietnam, and the Will to Soar
An Unforgettable Night of Unity and Emotion
“8Wonder demonstrates Vingroup’s serious investment in making Vietnam a cultural destination for the region,” said Dinh Tuan Dat, a performing arts expert who has followed the festival since its inception in 2023. “I particularly loved the duet between Tlinh and J Balvin. It’s a truly memorable moment, a Vietnamese artist collaborating with an international star on stage. It feels like the first step for Vietnam’s entertainment industry onto the global stage.”
From the moment the lights flashed on and the first deep bass notes reverberated through the air, the vast venue became an “emotional universe.” Multi-layered LED screens and laser beams cut across the night sky, creating a breathtaking visual spectacle. The music was a full-body experience, with every bass drop felt as much as heard. S(TRONG) Trong Hieu kicked off the night with his powerful vocals on the song Kho bau (Treasure), opening the floodgates of emotion.
The night was peppered with performances that resonated deeply with the national celebratory mood. A highlight was Hoa Minzy’s rendition of Bac Bling, where she was joined on stage by over 200 schoolchildren dressed in the red and gold of the Vietnamese flag. The crowd chanted her name, a testament to the powerful connection the Bac Ninh native forged with the audience.
The energy soared when singer Soobin appeared in a stylized ao dai, a traditional Vietnamese tunic. He began with his song Nguoi Viet (The Vietnamese), standing amidst a sea of light from thousands of cell phones. “Are you proud to be Vietnamese?” he asked the crowd. The resounding, thunderous cheer was a declaration, a moment when music transcended the stage to become a collective proclamation of national identity.
According to performing arts expert Dinh Tuan Dat, Vingroup’s organizers masterfully wove a subtle message into Soobin’s performance. “The notes from the dan bau [a traditional Vietnamese monochord] he played on the 8Wonder stage brought the audience back to their roots,” Dat observed. “Then the modern piano and beat brought them back to the present, a powerful metaphor for Vietnamese culture reaching the global stage.”
The atmosphere shifted dramatically when DPR IAN took the stage, his hypnotic voice and captivating presence electrifying the crowd. During hits like Don’t Go Insane and Limbo, the energy peaked when he stepped into the crowd, accepted a conical hat (non la), and wore it while playing his bass guitar.
The climax arrived with the explosive collaboration between Tlinh and J Balvin. The stage was a kaleidoscope of color, a “Latin carnival,” as Tlinh’s energetic rap blended seamlessly with the Latin music icon’s vibrant beats. The audience danced, cheered, and waved Vietnamese flags. It was a fiery performance, but for industry watchers, it was a historic moment: a Vietnamese artist standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a global superstar, not as a background act but as an equal. In that instant, the dream of “Made in Vietnam – Heard Worldwide” no longer seemed distant, but a tangible reality on the 8Wonder stage.
A Strategic Vision for Vietnam’s Cultural Future
Looking back at the entire event, it’s clear that 8Wonder was not just a concert but a strategic cultural statement. Every detail, from the choice of artists and musical concepts to the international collaborations, reflected a long-term vision: to bring Vietnamese culture to the world using the universal language of music and art.
When Hoa Minzy performed Bac Bling with schoolchildren in the national colors, and when Tlinh and J Balvin waved the Vietnamese flag, they transformed traditional elements into modern art that resonated with both young audiences and the international community.
“Each performance at 8Wonder was a cultural slice,” said Dinh Tuan Dat. “It both honored national values and paved the way for international integration.”
As an event celebrating the 80th National Day, 8Wonder had an even deeper significance. The stage at the National Exhibition Fair Center became a space where Vietnamese and international artists could collaborate, sing, and create together.
Dr. Bui Quoc Viet, a former member of the Independent Advisory Council of the Vietnam Tourism Association, noted that “8Wonder created a two-way street, bringing the world to Vietnam and Vietnam to the world.” He added that the festival solidified “Vietnam’s position as a leading destination for festivals and entertainment in the region.”
Dr. Viet concluded that for Vingroup, 8Wonder was more than just a demonstration of its ability to organize a major international event. It was about the company’s commitment to supporting the nation’s development, choosing to contribute to cultural growth. By creating an international stage for Vietnamese artists, the company helped build cultural value, foster a sense of national pride, and fuel the ambition for Vietnam to reach beyond its borders.
The festival ended with a brilliant fireworks display, a joyous crescendo to the National Day celebration. Beyond the lights and the music, 8Wonder: Moments of Wonder 2025 became a new symbol, a symbol of pride, of integration, and, above all, of a strong, ambitious Vietnam moving forward with the world.
Hashtag: #8Wonder #MomentsofWonder2025
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
Media OutReach
Blackwall Enters Vietnam: European Web Traffic Security Firm Launches Southeast Asia Expansion with 19-Year Hosting Partner HostVN
Estonian web traffic security company Blackwall announces its first publicly disclosed Southeast Asia partnership, bringing integrated traffic security to Vietnam’s digital infrastructure market through HostVN
HANOI, VIETNAM – Media OutReach Newswire – 23 June 2026 – Blackwall, a European web traffic security company, today announced a partnership with HOSTVN TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS JOINT STOCK COMPANY (HostVN), Vietnam’s established digital infrastructure provider, to launch HOSTVN Website Protection – powered by Blackwall. The partnership marks Blackwall’s first publicly announced entry into Southeast Asia.
Under the agreement, HostVN integrates Blackwall’s all-in-one traffic security platform into its hosting infrastructure, offering Vietnamese businesses integrated website protection covering L7 DDoS defence, advanced bot mitigation, web application firewall (WAF), SSL management, and content caching, delivered seamlessly by HostVN, requiring no in-house security expertise from the customer.
A New Category: Traffic Quality as a Business Problem
The partnership addresses a challenge that most Vietnamese businesses have not yet named: according to Statista Research, more than half of all web traffic today is generated by automated bots and not human visitors. The consequences extend beyond traditional security risks into hidden operational costs, skewed business intelligence, and revenue leakage.
“Vietnam is ready, and Blackwall is committing to it,” said Madan Rai, VP Sales Asia at Blackwall. “More than half the traffic hitting a website today is not a real customer. Bots and automated requests consume bandwidth, distort analytics, and drain advertising spend — silently, every day. Through HostVN, we are placing enterprise-grade traffic security directly into the infrastructure that Vietnamese businesses already rely on. This partnership anchors Blackwall’s broader expansion across Southeast Asia. We chose Vietnam as our launchpad because its digital economy is scaling rapidly, and it requires infrastructure that matches that ambition.”
HostVN: 19 Years, Six Reinventions
Founded in 2007, HostVN has served Vietnamese businesses across five successive phases of the digital economy: from web hosting to cloud infrastructure, content delivery, digital transformation services, and AI-related offerings. The Blackwall partnership represents the company’s sixth strategic evolution, adding intelligent traffic security to its infrastructure stack.
“Nineteen years ago, we started HostVN with one purpose: to give Vietnamese businesses a strong foundation on the internet,” said Duong Thanh Binh, Chairman of HostVN. “Vietnam has not stood still, and neither have we. Every phase of our growth has been driven by the same commitment – to give the businesses that trust us the infrastructure they need to thrive. Today, the threat is not just downtime. It is invisible traffic that costs money, corrupts data, and goes undetected. HOSTVN Website Protection, powered by Blackwall, is our answer and our commitment to Vietnam’s digital future.”
Technology Built for Service Providers Partners
Blackwall operates on a channel-first model. Its traffic security platform is designed to be delivered exclusively through hosting and cloud infrastructure providers. This model gives partners full control over pricing and packaging, while allowing them to retain the direct customer relationship.
The Blackwall platform operates as a reverse proxy positioned in front of customer websites. Traffic is inspected across multiple detection layers, including Layer 4 and Layer 7 signature analysis, comprehensive device fingerprinting, IP reputation scoring, and proprietary behavioural algorithms. Clean traffic is then forwarded to the origin server and malicious requests are blocked or presented controlled responses. The process is transparent to legitimate users, with no added latency.
HOSTVN Website Protection delivers this capability across four integrated components:
- L7 DDoS Protection: application-layer attack mitigation running on HostVN’s Clean Traffic infrastructure
- Advanced Bot Mitigation: Real-time detection and classification of humans, trusted bots, and automated traffic, including AI agents, to identify benign and malicious activity. Web Application Firewall (WAF): OWASP Top 10 aligned protection against injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and common web exploits
- SSL Management and Content Caching: automated SSL certificate handling, encrypted delivery, and performance optimisation that reduces server load and improves page speed
Vietnam as Blackwall’s First Southeast Asia Launch Market
Vietnam’s digital economy has grown substantially over the past decade, with business online presence now standard across sectors. Alongside that growth, the volume of automated and malicious web traffic targeting Vietnamese sites has increased in proportion. HostVN, with more than 50,000 customers and established Clean Traffic infrastructure connected to major domestic carriers, offers Blackwall the operational scale and market knowledge required for an effective regional entry.
Blackwall has indicated that Vietnam is the first in a planned series of Southeast Asia partnerships, with Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand identified as subsequent target markets. The company has also announced a major Series B funding round to support its international expansion.
Availability
HOSTVN Website Protection — powered by Blackwall is available to HostVN customers effective 20 May 2026. Pricing is available through HostVN directly. Further information is available at hostvn.net and blackwall.com.
Hashtag: #Blackwall
https://blackwall.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/blackwall-solutions/
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About Blackwall
Blackwall is a web traffic security company headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, specialising in web traffic management security for hosting providers, managed service providers and cloud infrastructure platforms. Blackwall’s all-in-one platform — combining load balancing, advanced bot mitigation, L7 DDoS protection, web application firewall (WAF), content caching, and SSL management — is delivered through a global network of hosting and infrastructure partners and protects more than 2.3 million websites worldwide. Blackwall.com
ABOUT HOSTVN (HOSTVN Technology Solutions Joint Stock Company)
HostVN has provided digital infrastructure services to Vietnamese businesses since 2007. The company operates shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, cloud infrastructure, and content delivery services, serving more than 50,000 customers. HostVN’s Clean Traffic infrastructure supports high-volume traffic management across major domestic carrier interconnects. Hostvn.net
Media OutReach
AS Watson Launches brand lab to Turn Retail Scale into a Data-driven Brand Growth Engine
The initiative formalises capabilities the Group has been building internally, combining data-led demand identification, integrated distribution, and execution across more than 17,000 O+O stores in Asia and Europe.
Over the past two years, AS Watson has introduced more than 4,800 new brands and brand extensions across its network, underscoring the scale of its brand development activity.
From Incubation to Execution
AS Watson brand lab departs from traditional incubator models by embedding brand development directly within AS Watson’s retail ecosystem.
Rather than incubating brands ahead of their market entry, the platform operates inside the market, using real-time customer data, shopping behaviour and category dynamics to inform development decisions.
Dr Malina Ngai, Group CEO of AS Watson, said the model reflects the company’s structural advantage. “We don’t wait for brands to find the market – we build them where demand already exists, and scale them through our ecosystem.”
A Systemised Growth Model
At the core of AS Watson brand lab is an integrated operating model linking insight, creation, distribution, demand activation and scaling.
The platform leverages AS Watson’s over 180 million loyalty members and O+O capabilities to accelerate brand selection and commercial execution.
A Structured Pathway to Scale
Brands within AS Watson brand lab are supported through a structured growth pathway, progressing from early-stage validation to regional scaling and category leadership.
At each stage, brands receive differentiated support across insight, distribution, marketing activation and investment, ensuring resources are focused where the greatest growth potential exists.
This staged approach enables AS Watson to systematically build, scale and prioritise brands, improving success rates while maintaining disciplined capital allocation.
Focus on High-Growth Segments
AS Watson brand lab will prioritise product segments including Asian beauty trends (K-beauty, J-beauty, C-beauty), ingredient-led skincare, health and wellness products and elevated personal care – areas where consumer demand continues to evolve rapidly.
The Group expects the platform to strengthen its ability to build proprietary and exclusive brands while improving speed-to-market and capital efficiency.
Proven Brand Scaling in Action
Early outcomes demonstrate how AS Watson brand lab translates insight into accelerated growth – not only by shaping brand development, but by scaling brands rapidly across markets through its integrated O+O ecosystem.
Across multiple categories and geographies, the platform has enabled brands to move from targeted market entry to multi-market expansion with speed and discipline:
COSRX (K-Beauty)– By combining COSRX’s innovation-led skincare expertise with
AS Watson’s extensive retail footprint and deep consumer insights, the partnership has accelerated international expansion and broadened consumer reach. This illustrates how the platform converts strong brand propositions into sustained category growth across markets.
&honey (J-Beauty) – Leveraging its distinctive product positioning alongside
AS Watson’s regional scale, &honey rapidly expanded beyond its home market, rolling out across multiple Asian markets within a short timeframe. This demonstrates the platform’s ability to systematically scale proven domestic leaders into regional brands.
e.l.f. Cosmetics (US) – Through partnership with AS Watson, e.l.f. has extended its community-led, value-driven model across Europe, translating strong brand engagement into measurable market penetration. The example highlights how consumer-centric brands can be amplified through local market execution at scale.
essence (Germany) – The expansion of essence across multiple markets, including exclusive partnerships, reflects how purpose-driven brands can achieve consistency and reach when supported by integrated distribution and retail insight. This underscores the platform’s ability to build sustained brand relevance and loyalty across diverse markets.
Across these examples, brands have scaled through a consistent model – combining data-led selection, integrated distribution, and coordinated market execution – demonstrating how AS Watson brand lab functions as a repeatable engine for brand growth, from market entry through to regional scale.
Scaling a Repeatable Engine
AS Watson brand lab positions AS Watson to leverage its retail footprint not only as a distribution channel, but as an engine for brand creation and scaling.
The initiative signals a shift from opportunistic brand sourcing towards a structured, repeatable growth model, reinforcing AS Watson’s ability to scale brands with speed, discipline and consistency while driving long-term portfolio value.
AS Watson continues to engage with selected brand partners and emerging brands aligned with its focus areas, with further information available through its official
AS Watson brand lab platform (https://www.aswatson.com/asw-brand-lab)
Hashtag: #ASWatson
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About AS Watson Group
Established in 1841, AS Watson Group is one of the world’s longest-standing and most recognised retail companies with roots in Asia. Today, the company operates over 17,000 stores across 12 retail brands in 31 markets, employing 130,000 people globally. This makes AS Watson Group the largest international health and beauty retailer in the world.
In the fiscal year 2025, AS Watson Group reported revenue of over US$26 billion. The company’s technology-enabled O+O (Offline plus Online) platforms serve over 6 billion shoppers annually, seamlessly integrating physical and digital retail experiences.
AS Watson Group supported over 180 charitable and non-profit organisations every year, dedicating over 40,000 hours of volunteer work to serve over 370,000 people in need in our operating markets.
AS Watson Group is also a member of the world-renowned multinational conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings Limited, which has four core businesses – ports and related services, retail, infrastructure and telecommunications in over 50 countries.
Please visit 
www.aswatson.com/our-company/o-and-o-strategy/ for more information.
A stream of partnership propose heightened tech and business connections across continents
HONG KONG / PARIS, FRANCE – Media OutReach Newswire – 22 June 2026 – Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) has successfully concluded its Paris delegation to Viva Technology (VivaTech) 2026, which celebrated its 10th anniversary as a global stage for ambitious startups from June 17 to 20. HKSTP reinforces its impactful role as Asia’s I&T ecosystem orchestrator, by confirming the signing of multiple memorandums of understanding (MOU) between Park companies and the European I&T community:
- Microalgae expert Algreen, signed with ForNatures, a South Korean Climate Tech company that specialises in carbon capture management, in amplifying mutual research and development capabilities to take a step closer to ESG goals.
- Robotics solutions provider Robocore, signed with ARCHTYP, a Slovenian cognitive software startup, enabling the display of a differentiating layer on a proven platform to reach market demands, while also closing deals with French advertising guru JCDecaux, to supply a thousand robots and extend its reach in the European market.
- The appeal and use cases of LeafIoT‘s green asset management has caught the eyes of European’s professionals in the preservation sector, including the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the Catalonian landscaping and environmental restoration company Gremi de Jardineria de Catalunya, and notably, Professor Andrea Galli from the Laboratory of Geotechnical Analysis and Modelling (GeoT-LAM) at Politecnico di Milano, all taking solid steps in exploring new opportunities and breakthroughs and boosts in market reach.
The annual showcase put a spotlight on enabling founders to connect with the local I&T community, explore market access, and forge global partnerships via pitching and matching sessions, networking mixers, and investor engagement. Compared with VivaTech 2025, this year’s delegation achieved even stronger momentum with over 50% growth in opportunities, totalling more than 200 potential business leads worth HK$70M in total.
HKSTP’s growing presence at VivaTech reflects its mission to open new doors for Hong Kong’s startups, build pathways into European markets and create reciprocal opportunities for European innovators to enter Asia through Hong Kong’s strategic location in the world’s No.1 innovation cluster – Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao GBA (World Intellectual Property Organisation Innovation Index).
Terry Wong, CEO of HKSTP, said: “France and the EU represent critical opportunities for Hong Kong and Chinese Mainland I&T ventures to scale globally. VivaTech provides a world-class platform for collaboration, co-creation, and knowledge exchange. Our strong ties with French partners underline the importance of Hong Kong as a global launchpad for innovation, supporting startups on their journey from local success to international impact.”
Highlights this year include the expansion of HKSTP’s partnership with Bouygues Construction, a global leader in sustainable construction and infrastructure headquartered in France, and operates across more than 60 countries and is recognised for delivering major projects in transport, energy, real estate, and smart cities.
Through its Hong Kong arm, Dragages Hong Kong, Bouygues has maintained a 70-year legacy in Hong Kong, contributing to iconic infrastructure projects and championing innovation in areas such as construction safety, modular design, green materials, and site automation. HKSTP is the first and only institution in Hong Kong to bridge tech venture directly into the Bouygues Construction “Scale One: programme, providing a fast track to prototyping and commercialisation. This initiative sets a new benchmark for cross-border industrial innovation partnerships, accelerating global impact for Hong Kong startups through trusted collaborations with leading European enterprises.
Building on existing strong foundations, Bouygues Construction is now stepping up collaboration with HKSTP beyond Asia, offering selected Hong Kong startups the chance to showcase solutions at Bouygues’ headquarters in France, with opportunities for solution validation and pilot trials across European operations.
The Hong Kong Tech Pavilion, organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and supported by partners including HKSTP, showcased market-ready solutions spanning AI, green- and health tech from 24 tech ventures, and marked a major milestone in creating a direct bridge between Hong Kong and Europe’s heart of innovation and technology.
Hashtag: #HKSTP
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
HKSTP
More information about HKSTP is available at 
www.hkstp.org.
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