Skootar messenger service plans to expand outside Bangkok base

Skootar, a two-year-old start-up that has already broken even in its operating costs, has revealed its 2017 plan to expand its business in three dimensions: tapping new markets, expanding upcountry, and branching out into the Southeast Asia region. 
Suwatt Pathompakawan, co-chief executive officer and co-founder, said that this year Skootar planned to go beyond being a document messenger service to tap new markets including e-commerce and food delivery, as well as expanding into provinces including Chiang Mai, Nakhon Ratchasima, Chon Buri and Phuket. 
To go upcountry, he said, it will work with local partners. Meanwhile, to expand regionally, it will collaborate with strategic partners that already have customer bases.
“We are talking with a Malaysian venture-capital company on fundraising. It is pre-Series A funding to help us to gear up for the Southeast Asia market this year,” Suwatt said. 
Previously, it raised seed funding from 500 TukTuks, 500 Durians and Galaxy Venture. 
Currently, Skootar serves Bangkok and its perimeter. It has several thousand messengers and has provided 200,000 service transactions. The company earned sales volume or gross merchandise value of more than US$1 million (Bt35 million) in 2016. 
“We improve our services every day. Our core business is a B2B [business to business] document messenger service that we always improve by customising our product to fit the customer’s business,” Suwatt said.
Skootar’s customer bases are both businesses and individuals, with a transaction ratio of 60:40. Its revenue comes from transaction fees. 
“We do not focus on individuals, but we have a service for them. We will stick with [encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises] to leave their document-delivery service to Skootar so they can concentrate on their business. There is a lot of room for us [to grow], as we have captured less than 10 per cent of the potential market,” Suwatt said. 
Skootar is one of two Thai start-ups that have joined the Google Developers Launchpad Accelerator (LPA) this year. 
As part of this programme, start-ups receive equity-free support; two weeks of all-expense-paid training at Google headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley; access to Google engineers, resources and mentors to work closely with Google for six months; credits for Google products; and public relations training and global media opportunities.
Suwatt said that from now on, start-ups in the LPA programme would go through different sessions related to all aspects of building a successful company. This includes setting up OKRs (objectives and key results), UX (user experience) workshops, media training, building a company culture, performance management, hiring and on-boarding, one-on-one mentoring, scaling the company and much more.
“The highlight will be for us to have a chance to go to Google headquarters, the Googleplex in Mountain View, California,” he said. 
“This is a chance to see the famous campus and stuff that reflects Google’s characteristics of being fun, colourful and innovative, like multi-coloured bicycles that Googlers use to get between campus buildings, the giant android statues depicting each version of the Android operating system, Google merchandise store and colourful umbrellas at the outdoor cafe. 
“Now we are going through one of the best start-up bootcamps in the world, and we are fully committed. I hope I have a chance to share more stories after we graduate from the programme.
“We joined an accelerator before – DTAC Accelerate Batch 3 – so we were familiar with the flow and how a bootcamp [was] conducted. We are not quite 100 per cent correct on that, though, as we found out after the first two days of joining the [LPA] programme. 
“Google has also invited experts from  [several] countries and Google’s own employees who themselves have deep knowledge and experience to teach and share their two cents. 
“Being [employees of] one of the most innovative companies in the world, they have also created a specific app for all participants – start-ups, mentors and Googlers – to make sure everyone can access information on each attendee, who is who, and all daily agendas too,” Suwatt said.