"Focus on creating value. The impact will follow."
— James NguyenBuilding systems
from the ground up.
James Nguyen graduated in Software Engineering from Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) — Vietnam's top-ranked technical university — with a foundation that went deeper than code. He learned how systems think, how they fail, and how to design them to perform under pressure.
That foundation became the engine of two decades of building. In 2004, he founded E-Solution in Ho Chi Minh City — growing it into a multi-product technology company that built platforms across travel, training, human verification, safety compliance, ERP and professional networking. Not as a developer. As a founder who understood both the technical architecture and the business problem it was solving.
Along the way, he stepped outside his own ventures and into boardrooms as a consultant — helping companies like Printing No.7 JSC restructure their organisations, redesign their performance systems and grow revenue by over 45% in a single year. And helping VPIN scale from a fragmented distribution operation to a nationwide network of 2,000+ retail points of sale with an ERP backbone and $5M monthly sales.
Learning to think
beyond borders.
Expanding into New Zealand was not simply a geographic move — it was an education in how Western markets think, evaluate risk and build trust. James founded Kiwi Online Solution Ltd in Hamilton, bringing his technology and business-building experience into a new regulatory, cultural and commercial environment.
In New Zealand, he became one of the earliest entrants in the Airbnb short-term rental market when the platform was just establishing its presence in the country. Through KK International, he built a professional tourism property operation — and went on to advise and mentor operators who later achieved revenues of nearly NZ$4M per year. Alongside this, he founded VNZ Holdings to invest in and develop small-to-mid scale tourism real estate projects (under NZ$10M).
During COVID-19, he co-invested and co-built GHT (Global Human Trust) — a blockchain verification ecosystem built on Ethereum. Think of it as what smart contracts are to ETH — but purpose-built for human and object verification. GHT was listed on Bibox and Kyber Network, with mobile apps on iOS and Android, fully compliant with New Zealand's FMA utility token guidelines.
It was here that his understanding of cross-border complexity deepened — not from theory, but from navigating it directly. That insight would later become one of J&L International's most distinctive assets. He is currently a DBA candidate at the University of Otago, researching how organisations measure and optimise performance.
Everything converges
in Melbourne.
J&L International Pty Ltd was founded in Melbourne in 2023 — not as a new idea, but as the natural convergence of 20 years of experience, three markets, and a clear gap in the advisory landscape.
There was no shortage of consultants who could produce strategy documents. What was missing was a firm that could combine strategic advisory with genuine implementation capability — and do it across the AU–NZ–Vietnam corridor with the cultural fluency and market knowledge to actually execute.
Beyond J&L International, James is deeply committed to the Vietnamese professional community in Australia. He serves as Co-President – Industry & Entrepreneurship and Head of Strategy & Partnerships of the VASEA Victoria Chapter — the Vietnam–Australia Scholars & Experts Association, an ASIC-registered not-for-profit building collaboration between Australia and Vietnam across academia, industry and innovation. Through VASEA, James works to strengthen knowledge exchange, mentorship and cross-border collaboration between the two countries.
That is J&L International. Based in Melbourne. Operating across three markets. Built on two decades of building real things, for real clients, with real outcomes.