'DTAC Accelerate' start-up

Chief executive officer Lars-Ake Norling said the programme this year offered unique and special opportunities in all aspects for all participants to succeed.

One difference from previous years is that the company will help expand the marketing opportunity to more than 186 million customers of 14 mobile-telecom companies, including DTAC, under Telenor Group around the world.

It will also provide a dedicated mentor for each finalist team to give one-on-one coaching throughout the four-month programme.

"The co-working space offers 80 seats for all tech start-ups in Thailand as a place for them to work together closely seven days a week," Norling said. About half of Thais have smartphones and access to the Internet. This is expected to increase to 80 per cent by 2020.

Thailand is the leading country in Southeast Asia in mobile payment, with growth of 50 per cent per year. The missing piece is the pool of tech talents, he said.

Andrew Kvalseth, DTAC senior vice president and head of corporate strategy and business innovation, said the programme still categorised applicants into two tracks – incubation and acceleration.

The incubation track is for those with ideas but who have yet to create a product or business model, while the acceleration track is for those who already have a product and business model but look for help to improve, develop and grow the product.

The programme is open to all types of products, such as mobile applications for consumers, digital education content, music, games, entertainment, books, Internet of Things (IoT), e-commerce and m-commerce, and applications for small and medium-sized enterprises, social enterprises and social-networking services.

"We look for anything about mobile and online as well as any application to serve our customers and any application for society, such as for the education and agriculture areas," he said.

Applications are open until the end of the month. Interested persons can submit their proposals, including business model, product instruction manual, revenue potential, target customers and benefits to customers. Details and online applications are available at accelerate.DTAC.co.th.

A pitch clinic will be held on May 16 to help applicants prepare their proposals. The selection of the top 20 teams will take place from June 1-2. The final five teams, disclosed on Pitch Day – June 11 – will attend an intensive boot camp from July to October. The final round of pitching and the winner will be announced on Demo Day in October.

Awards are the same as last year. Each of the selected teams will immediately receive an investment of Bt500,000 that can increase to a maximum of Bt1.5 million, and also receive commercialisation support upon the start of the boot camp.

Finalist teams will also receive Bt300,000 Amazon Web Services credit and training from Amazon’s engineering team and legal advice from DTAC’s legal team as well as free one-year access and five allocated seats per team in the DTAC Accelerate co-working space in Chamchuri Square in Bangkok.

The five mentors are successful Thai entrepreneurs – Tiwa from Kaidee.com, Somwang from Paysbuy, Yod from Wongnai.com, Wai from Prizeza.com and Charn from Taamkru.com.