Start-ups ‘a force to push economy of Thailand forward’

Fintech can improve the financial industry

Korn Chatikavanij, former finance minister, said he truly believed that start-ups, especially those in the area of financial technology, are the revolution that can push a country like Thailand forward. 

Thailand has millions of people with bank accounts but no access to formal banking services. 

 

Fintech start-ups can improve the quality of access and reduce the cost of financial services.

Thailand’s basic telecommunication infrastructure and smartphone penetration are pretty |good. Thailand’s PromptPay will digitise money but fin-tech is one step forward to monetise data, which is creating value-added from data. 

Not only fintech, other areas of start-ups can also help improve the quality of real sector businesses. For example, agriculture-tech can help farmers to use better technologies to unitise the existing resources that have to be much more productive and efficient. 

“About 40 per cent of the population is in agriculture. Those 40 per cent actually make about 8 per cent of the country’s GDP. That is clearly unproductive. 

“Start-ups can come to |help them improve productivity through the use of technology,” he said.

Awareness, collaboration and incentives are key to driving a start-up nation

Suphachai Chearavanont, president and chief executive officer of True Corporation, said that if Thailand makes the ecosystem correctly and incentivises the talents around the region, then Thailand can become a start-up nation. 

Thailand can get a head start. Thais can work with foreigners, expatriates or young entrepreneurs around the world. 

“We can catch up really fast, because the brainpower is the same. It’s the learning curve. 

“How you force the cluster/community of start-ups that is big enough to collaborate and interact to accelerate the learning curve in each area of technology? 

“We can leverage on the strengths we have and utilise them,” he said. 

To evolve, the first thing that needs to be created is an awareness-like session like this panel. 

For the country to move forward, it needs incentives to drive the ecosystem. Venture capital, seed funds, accelerator programmed – all of these have to be put in place. 

Also, government incentives are quite important to attract all these funds, not only from Thai corporations or Thai funds but also from around the world.

“Thailand is the melting pot for the region. It is an open culture. It is the place that attracts people from around the world. 

“That is the key thing for a start-up nation or to go to the start-up nation,” he said.

 

Government policy is important

Barak Sharabi, head of the Economic and Trade Mission at the Israeli Embassy, said Thailand had a lot of potential to become a start-up nation. It just needs support to grow faster. 

Israel and Thailand have almost the same GDP. Thailand should take certain things from Israel in terms of innovative capability. 

Israel has the highest per capita density of start-ups in the world. It has a very good research and development ability, and different mentality. 

Israel created a venture capital environment and it formed the funds. The government provided support for the private sector. That helped the country improve its economy. 

Thailand has about 40 per cent of its population working in agriculture, which needs to create more value-added products. 

“The challenge for Thailand is to dare to do, in the certain time you have to do. Sometimes, they take some time, more than required. 

“Thailand can do so much better by adapting certain technologies. You do not to create everything at the beginning. Thailand already has strengths in different capabilities. You just utilise these strengths with the use of technology,” he said.

The Thai government should execute a policy to support the market and the private sector to attract foreign direct investment in the country. There are lots of funds for |start-ups out there around the world. Start-ups are the next generation of Thailand that the government should support as much as it can.