Virtual seminar sheds light on changing regional landscape of start-ups in post-Covid era
Start-ups should develop technology that will help them survive and succeed in the post-Covid era, several experts said at the “Thailand Start-up in Post-Covid Era 2022” on Friday.
The virtual seminar, jointly hosted by the Nation Thailand and SpringNews, featured Australian Ambassador Allan McKinnon’s discourse on “Australia’s experience on start-up development”.
Also attending were PTT senior executive vice president Dr Buranin Rattanasombat, QueQ (Thailand) CEO and co-founder Rungsun Promprasith and Bitkub Capital Group Holdings’ CEO Jirayut Srupsrisopha. They spoke about “Start-ups – the newest warlords of Thai economy”.
In his discourse, McKinnon pointed out that Australia and Thailand were similar in tourism, have world-class universities and systems to support start-ups worldwide.
“Apart from China and Singapore, Australia is also one of the Asia-Pacific countries which is outstanding in start-ups. Australia also has entrepreneurship indicators similar to Sweden and Singapore,” he said.
“In the beginning, Australia started by holding activities for start-ups in Melbourne and Sydney before expanding to other countries. These activities helped boost the GDP of countries with start-ups by US$1.3 trillion.”
He added that Australia prioritises support for start-ups such as opening the door for interaction with investors, business mentors and partners, at least until they grow to become important economic drivers.
“Start-ups will play an important role in helping the economy to recover in the post-Covid-19 era,” he said.
Meanwhile, PTT’s Buranin said the company was in the process of restructuring to become a multinational energy company to become a part of society in the future.
“In the future, fuel-oriented businesses will face environment-related issues, such as [demands for a] low-carbon society and new green technologies,” he said.
He added that there will be more cooperation between organisations, but it is still unclear as to who will become the main protagonist in the post-Covid era.
“I think many large companies are worried about this issue as well because the post-Covid-19 era will be the time when technology plays an important role and goes deeper,” he added.
Bitkub Capital’s Jirayut said Covid-19 is a key factor that has accelerated a change in technology, evidenced by the fact that more people are working online and the headquarters of many large firms no longer being based in large cities.
He said Bitkub uses more than 50 applications and works on a cloud system to facilitate business operation.
“We pay a monthly subscription fee for such technologies and we can stop using them any time we want,” he said.
QueQ’s co-founder Rungsun said his company is pushing for its queuing application to play an important role in Thailand’s public health and immigration sectors.
He added that the Thai government can support the development of start-ups directly without having to come up with terms of reference (TOR) agreements because these start-ups are already developing technology that can support the health, agriculture and education sectors of the country.
“It takes at least three years for government support to reach start-ups, and by then it’s too late due to fast-changing modern technology,” he added.
