Overseas Vietnamese
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, David Thai, the company's founder, witnessed the rise of the Starbucks coffee chain from a small company in his hometown of Seattle to a multinational corporation. He later cited this as the inspiration behind the founding of Highlands Coffee, which first began operation in Hanoi in 1998. The company's initial registration marked the first time an Overseas Vietnamese person was able to register a private company of any kind in Vietnam. Two years later, in 2000, the company was registered as a joint stock company, again a first for an Overseas Vietnamese.