Inclusive businesses (IB) are companies that provide goods, services, and livelihoods on a commercially viable basis, either at scale or scalable, to people living at the base of the economic pyramid by making them part of the value chain of companies’ core business as suppliers, distributors, retailers, or customers. In addition to these commercially inclusive activities, businesses may also pursue broader socially inclusive goals. Inclusive business should promote sustainable development in all its dimensions – economic, social and environmental. IB models deliver solutions to the BoP through two main ways:

• Providing goods and services to the BoP relevant to overcome poverty (and thus involve them as consumer) or
• Creating income opportunities for the BoP, to bring them out of poverty or substantially improve their economic basis, and engaging them as suppliers, laborers, distributors or as shareholders. Most IB engage the poor as income earners.

In 2019, to support the development of an enabling environment for inclusive businesses in Viet Nam, the Agency for Enterprise Development (AED) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) requested the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Inclusive Business Action Network (iBAN) to conduct the present landscape study. The study includes a market study of current inclusive businesses in Viet Nam (with profiles of 18 real and potential IB models) and an assessment of the enabling environment. It also provides recommendations for promoting inclusive businesses.