News & Events · Green Business Matching · 4 Nov 2026
Thế Giới Chay: a vegan fish sauce made from cashew apples, the fruit the cashew capital of Vietnam's Southeast still throws away
Vietnam's Southeast region has more than 300,000 hectares of cashew. Growers take the nut; the cashew apple, many times larger than the nut, is left to rot beneath the trees. Âu Vương Ngọc, who grew up in a Tây Ninh family that ran a vegetarian eatery, saw something else there: "Seeing the opportunity inside the challenge."
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AnchayTV · Official media partner of Green Business Matching Green business stories 3/35 from Green Business Matching Day Vietnam, 4 November 2026. Original on gbm.network ↗
Thế Giới Chay Joint Stock Company · Hòa Thành, Tây Ninh · thegioichay.com.vn
She began her research in 2019 with help from a younger sibling, a lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry. Cashew apples carry acids and bitter polyphenols; ferment them carelessly and the batch is ruined. It took nearly three years. In 2021 the first bottle of Trái Điều (Cashew Apple) vegan fish sauce was born: traditionally fermented, umami-rich, 100% plant-based.
Farmers turned sauce-makers
Thế Giới Chay's model goes beyond buying cashew apples. The company guarantees to buy the fruit at VND 3,000 a kilo, teaches growers to ferment it right in the orchard, and buys back the raw sauce at VND 50,000 a litre. Every 300 kg of cashew apples yields 100 litres of sauce, and growers earn roughly VND 20 million more per hectare each season from what they used to throw away. Trái Điều fish sauce holds OCOP 3-star status in Tây Ninh and won first prize at the 2024 Tây Ninh Innovation Awards.
From that first bottle, Thế Giới Chay now makes Trái Thơm (pineapple) and Nấm Đông Cô (shiitake) vegan fish sauces, mushroom mắm ruốc (a vegan take on shrimp paste), calamansi salt, mushroom salt, mushroom salt sauce, soy sauce and vegan snacks, produced at the ISO 22000-certified Vương Ngọc Vegan plant in Hòa Thành on a line with a capacity of around 150,000 bottles a day. Its products are already exported to the United States and the EU, and the company is working toward Halal certification to enter Muslim markets. "I have always wanted to bring vegetarian food closer to travellers," Ngọc says.
At Green Business Matching Day
The Thế Giới Chay booth, with its "Buy 3 vegan dipping sauces, get 1 free" standee and wooden shelves stacked with amber bottles of vegan fish sauce, was among the first ready at Lumi Hub on the morning of 04.11.2026. The Consul General of India in Ho Chi Minh City, Dr. Vipra Pandey, stopped at the counter and looked over the jars of mushroom salt and bottles of vegan dipping sauce; singer Dương Ngọc Thái, a neighbour from the bánh mì booth, also came over for a taste. For Indian partners, from a country where most of the population is vegetarian, a dipping sauce fermented entirely from plants is a story worth starting with.
Thế Giới Chay is one of the 21 sponsors of the programme.
At the recognition ceremony that closed the programme, Thế Giới Chay was honoured by the organisers together with the other 20 sponsors, witnessed by Mr. Mohan Ramesh Anand (Founder & CEO, Canopus Group), Mr. Thao Le (Founder, AnChay.TV) and Mr. Nguyễn Tiến Tuyến (Founder & CEO, Chay Vietnam).
Green Business Matching Day Vietnam is co-organised by INCHAM with Canopus, AnChay.TV and Chay Vietnam, with the support of the Consulate General of India in Ho Chi Minh City, Ministry of External Affairs of India.
Based on material provided by the company; compiled by the organisers of Green Business Matching Day Vietnam as a gift to the businesses that joined the day.
