Thailand through the eyes of local startups

Image credit: Jan

A country known as the Land of Smiles, Thailand is definitely the place to visit as a tourist for its friendly hospitable people, beautiful beaches, spas, scenic and cultural attractions. But as a tech ecosystem and business hub, how does Thailand work? What are the unique features and challenges of Thailand that local startups face?

To answer these questions, I took the opportunity to speak with the various local startups at the recent Echelon Thailand event in Nov 2015, which was held in Bangkok.

Market gaps and entrepreneurs-at-work

So what are the interesting market gaps in Thailand? And how have entrepreneurs come to address these issues?

In education, Charn Manawanitjarern, who hails from the capital Bangkok, claims that the education standards is among the worst in ASEAN. “Thais read less and less every year and our children are less interested in academic subjects. Poor quality of education system, sub-standard teaching professionals, and inadequate infrastructure all contribute to the country’s education problem.”

To energise students to learn, he founded Taamkru, a testing app platform which makes learning fun for children and allows parents / educators to track their children’s performance in real time. Taamkru also offers comprehensive testing platform to schools with over one million questions in its data banks.

Jens Pold, an Estonian who lived in Thailand in the last ten years, discovered a large expectations gap between employers and qualified talent. “Currently, Thailand has the second highest rate of job turnover in the world for young professionals.

Millennials in Thailand are not receiving adequate coaching in regards to career planning so once they graduate from universities, there is feeling of panic and the urgency to get quickly employed, which ends up landing a job not suiting unique skills or areas of passion. Companies, on the other hand, feel let down as they spend resources on training new employees only for them to leave soon after, resulting in the candidates not being able to move forward with their careers and to develop professionally.”

Pold co-founded Jobnisit, a career development portal that aims to provide better career opportunities for millennials in Thailand, by matching them with relevant job positions through an industry-leading algorithm called NisitMatch. Jobnisit makes finding the right career less of a rocket science, while also bringing transparency to workplace with company insights and reviews.

Jeratch Tongjitti, (Jay for short), a local Thai, talks about the eating habits of Thais. “People eat more than three times a day in Thailand, unlike Europe which I lived in some time ago. There are food stores and street vendors of many varieties everywhere in town 24/7 which serves the Thai penchant for eating.

The taste of the food is key: people are willing to queue up and wait for hours to eat at their favourite restaurant. As long as there is good food, people will come, regardless of distance.” At the same note, she also found that there were aspiring chefs who love to cook and share their delicious creations with others.

She founded Jaysource, an online Home-cooking platform, which gives everyone that loves to cook to have their own restaurant online and sell their yummy food to other people.

Vladyslav Grankin, who hails from Ukraine, found a lot of empty vacation property like luxury villas in the cities of Phuket and Samui owned by a diversity of nationalities who do not live in Thailand and have limited access to property management services. At the same time, there were many tourists visiting these cities and wanted a 5-star value-for-money experience.

Grankin is CEO of Phuket-based Villacarte, a property and vacation management platform to address both needs. To date, Villacarte, and its sister associate Bizphuket, have 700 over premium and luxury villas in Phuket, more than international competitors like Travelmob, Homeaway or Airbnb. On top of assisting to rent the villas, Villacarte provides a range of services to well-off tourists from nannies to drivers to assist the tourists during their stay.

Challenges

Advice to startups in Thailand

Ending thoughts