Year of the start-up phenomenon

The launch of AIS Start-up Weekend 2011 in December last year was seen as the take-off point of Thailand’s tech start-up phenomenon throughout 2012.

After participating in a two-day workshop at the event, five new software companies with potential products for the market have emerged. They are Chatterbox, ShopSpot, LikeMe, GotIt, and Flowz.

Chatterbox is a mobile application that bridges content providers and broadcasters with their audience, with the purpose of creating an augmented channel for entertainment and user-engagement. 

ShopSpot is an application enabling consumer-to-consumer mobile commerce. It is designed to facilitate quick sales by individuals through three instant steps: snap-tag-post. 

LikeMe is an application for iOS and Android platforms aimed at helping people to get privileges from brands they interact with in their daily life. 

GoiIT is an application for brand loyalty allowing users to scan the QR code at the shop to collect points for loyalty rewards.

Flowz is another app offering new privilege experience and fun activities to users and also to enable businesses to create a public relations channel via customer loyalty programme.

In May, AIS continued the momentum of the tech start-up movement by introducing the start-up project, which is expected to be a long-term community between AIS and developers to encourage tech start-ups to be partners of AIS.

Also, InTouch – the parent of Thaicom and Advanced Info Service – formerly known as Shin Corp, launched a Bt200-million corporate venture-capital fund at the end of May to invest in promising information-technology, broadcast content, telecommunication and media businesses, as a strategy to diversify its portfolio. 

Ookbee, the major e-publication platform provider, was the first firm invested in under InTouch’s InVent venture-capital project.

In July, the leading tech blog “Thumbsup”, together with Spring News and the co-working space office “Hubba”, arranged the first tech start-up conference in Bangkok called “Start it Up, Power it Up”, as a meeting point for tech start-ups in Thailand. 

At the event, it introduced the Venture Catalyst (VC) Group, which plays the role of tech entrepreneur and tech investor to catalyse start-ups in Thailand. The VC Group, a tech investor and tech entrepreneur for three years, now partners Foxconn – the world’s largest electronic manufacturer and the maker of Apple’s iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and Amazon’s kindle – in a joint venture with a new tech start-up in Thailand called The Power All Venture. Currently the VC Group has invested in four tech start-up companies. 

Meanwhile another fund, SPC Capital – a venture capitalist in renewable energy – is now looking at funding tech start-ups as well. 

Lastly, a group of entrepreneurs called M8VC has launched plans to be an incubator, accelerator and provider of technology investment to assist the Thai start-up community using the experience or networks of each founder of M8VC who have started a venture. M8VC has taken the initiative to bridge the gap for Thai entrepreneurs so they can have access to knowledge, networks, and funding to compete on a regional scale. 

The group kicked off its first activity in Thailand, a pitching event between five Thai tech entrepreneurs – Attack Price, Privepass, sotify.me, Photobook Maker, and Freehab – and 20 investors from Southeast Asia in early December. The group is looking be a bridge between start-ups and investors, and showing the world that there is an alternative way to doing things.

 

Successful new businesses

 

Builk Asia, developer of Builk.com, is a Thai tech start-up that has secured investment from foreign venture capitalists and is expanding its business to the regional market. It has become successful by providing software to many small construction companies and is widely known both in the country and in the Asia-Pacific region.

Also, Builk Asia won the Echelon 2012 hosted by Singapore. Echelon 2012 is a two-day, double-track event with more than 1,100 delegates, a marketplace of up to 50 start-ups and various workshops.

Builk.com is an online and social network platform that provides free software through software-as-a-service model for SMEs in the construction businesses. 

Builk.com is the winner of Thailand ICT Awards 2011 and Asia-Pacific ICT Awards 2011 in the industrial application category.

ShopSpot is a tech start-up founded by a group of Thai developers. The company was set up in February 2012 with 15,000 Singapore dollars (about Bt370,000) in seed funding from Joyful Frog Digital Incubator. 

The team’s journey started at the end of last year when it participated in the AIS Start-up Weekend Bangkok 2011, sponsored by AIS, Software Park Thailand, Mobile Technology for Thailand Group and SingTel Innov8, the corporate venture arm of the SingTel Group. Start-up Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers and product managers come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch start-ups.

Ookbee, was founded in mid-2012 as a major e-publication platform provider. It is the first company to secure investment from InTouch’s InVent venture-capital project. The capital injected by InVent will be used to develop new digital content platforms and to reinforce existing Ookbee services and sales channels. Ookbee has set up an office in Vietnam to tap the e-book market there and will open in Malaysia.

Ookbee develops digital publication platforms to permit magazines and newspapers provide content in the form of e-books or e-magazines. It commands 80 per cent of the e-book market in Thailand.