Grooming entrepreneurs of tomorrow

IN ORDER to groom the country’s future entrepreneurs for operating successful business start-ups, Bangkok-based King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thon Buri (KMUTT) has officially launched the Hatch Centre training and fostering facility in the hope of equipping its students with the required skill sets, and more. 

The goal is to ensure that young entrepreneurs with great innovations and ideas do not just fade away, but survive and thrive in the business world, the centre’s adviser Tiranee Achalakul said. 

“The Hatch Centre stemmed from KMUTT professors’ realisation that many ideas and inventions in the students’ thesis pre-graduation projects could be used in real life and developed into successful businesses. So it would be regrettable if those ideas went belly-up along the way,” she said. 

“The Hatch Centre will help develop an idea into innovation, then propel it forwards into real business as a start-up, and scale it up to create a meaningful impact on society,” she added.

The main duty of the Hatch Centre is to train its students and personnel to have business management knowledge, she said. 

Some students had great ideas, which could further develop into great businesses, but they lacked the required business-administration knowledge and related skills, she said, hence the centre was officially founded to fulfil this role. 

“The Hatch Centre believes in youth power, that they can lead to change for the better because these young people have creativity, motivation and commitment to work. Also, they dare to think and to take action without any of the anxiety that older people have,” Tiranee added.

At present, many businesses in Thailand have experienced significant growth, especially small-scale ones like start-ups that received much support from both the public and private sectors. 

Some private companies, such as Thoresen Thai Agencies (TTA), have been willing to support and invest in start-ups with the potential to sustain a business for the long-term.

“The future’s growth depends on start-ups, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Thai students’ innovations and start-ups being able to compete with other countries on the international stage,” TTA president and CEO Chalermchai Mahagitsiri said during the Hatch Centre’s recent launch.

“Doing a start-up is dependent on what satisfies the entrepreneur, since there is no right or wrong answer for the business model. It is important to start doing something. If you are afraid of problems, you won’t have a chance to get it work,” Grab Thailand co-founder Jutasree Kuvinichkul said.

However, starting a business is not easy, and not every start-up can be successful and remain in existence for long, Peetachai Dejkraisak, chief executive and co-founder of Siam Organic, said. 

Entrepreneurs must face challenges and obstacles along the way, and must therefore have strong commitment, motivation and a goal to conduct business successfully in order to overcome the problems, he said. 

“Live the life you love, and do it the best,” he added, in the hope of motivating the country’s next entrepreneurs.

The Hatch Centre has evolved from the university’s previous project – the KMUTT Student Entrepreneurship Programme – which was established three years ago to help its soon-to-graduate students get a chance to present their thesis projects in front KMUTT lecturers and outsiders from the real business world. 

The programme has to date successfully trained students to be young entrepreneurs with their own business in five companies, including InsightEra, which invented a social-network analytic Web application called DOM; CupCode, which produces websites, mobile applications and software designs; and Integrace Solution, which has created Skypacs – a software program used for reading 3D medical images.