Emerging companies to gain from Bt200m IT fund
THE Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) is setting up a fund to help startups and other ventures described as transitional businesses adopt new information technology in support of business expansion.
The DEPA Fund will be established with total investment of about Bt200 million, said Chatchai Khunpitiluk, senior executive vice president of the agency. The project would be launched officially next month.
Within the overall fund will be the DEPA Startup Fund and the DEPA Transformation Fund, each with a budget of Bt100 million.
For the DEPA Startup Fund, the agency – in the role of an angel investor – will provide grants to startups that need money to develop their projects. The grants will range from Bt10,000 to Bt300,000 per project.
The agency will also make co-investments for startups that want to spend more than Bt300,000, with a cap of Bt5 million.
The agency will hold equity of less than 50 per cent and the startup will be able to withdraw the equity from DEPA within three years. The agency expects that around 200 to 400 startups will participate in the funding project.
The DEPA Transformation Fund project will provide funding to support transitional small and medium-sized enterprises and other companies that want to adopt information technology from local software and hardware producers.
The project will provide Bt10,000 to Bt300,000 for such transitional SMEs and companies to aid them in this goal.
“We will assume the role of a facilitator to perform matching between startups and SMEs, as well as other companies, to help them achieve their requirements,” Chatchai said.
“Startup will able to provide their products and services to support the demand of customers. Meanwhile, business and SMEs will able to use locally developed products and services of high quality to support their businesses.
“As result, this will create a win-win situation that will boost the startups and enhance the quality of their product offerings as well as the efficiency of their operations. In this way, they will be able to ensure the sustainability of their businesses.”
Separately, DEPA will partner with the private sector to conduct the Asia Digital Expo 2018 from January 25-27. The event will be a showcase of advances in information technology, applications and solutions to support business in the digital era. It expects that the event will generate around Bt200 million in revenue.
