Thailand’s Startup Scene, Rising From Political Flames, Floods, And Solid Foundations

via Jo@net on Flickr

I spent a week in Bangkok, meeting with startups and industry professionals, and I’m fascinated. The nascent startup scene is evolving at a clip. It’s rising out of a newfound political stability (although that’s still a bit shaky) and a host of elements that have been waiting to shine. With startups like Ookbee getting recent funding and stars like Builk winning Echelon, Thai startups are accelerating like crazy. Just in the past year, Launchpad and Hubba co-working spaces opened up and all three of the biggest key telcos in Thailand, AIS, True, and DTAC have been investing money in incubating new startups (and yes, that’s particularly political, particularly unique). Not to mention, tech blogs like Thumbs Up and Blognone are ever so influential.

And with all of these developments all happening within a very short time frame, how could Thailand could accelerate to the point that it is today?

Well, let’s not get ahead ourselves. The scene in Bangkok is still small, and it’s still rife with problems like a lack of developers, lacking in people thinking globally or regionally, barriers outside of the urban areas, an isolated local and foreign population, and more. It’s all emerging out of a very recent political stability. But key elements have been waiting in the background for startups to rise up. The foundation is there.

Thailand’s open economy (which thus has drawn in lots of foreigners) and very cosmopolitan capital city of Bangkok has bred a strong middle class educated base to draw good ideas, execution, and business sense from. Although, it won’t be easy for everyone to transition to tech startups.

If you take a look at Thailand’s apps and websites, you’ll see that, in terms of design, they’re really nice. Why is that? It’s Thailand’s lucky exposure to MNCs and conglomerates contracting with local developers and companies. In contrast, Vietnam’s tech world is dominated by outsourcing, producing droves of developers but not companies that need to execute on the design and product front.

Many tech companies that you see in Thailand survive off of enterprise solutions, and with the novelty of the word “startup” coming in, some of them are transitioning to their own products. Not only is this because the enterprise world is drying up, but also because looking at consumer and global markets appears to be more lucrative. People in offline industries are considering tech solutions and tech companies are considering startup.

On top of all this, a steady stream of events has crept up on the community, everything from SIPA to Mekong ICT to INET to Women Startup event to Echelon to Tech in Asias Meetup to Startup Thailand. The discussions around the digital and online are diverse and multi-faceted.

In other words, Thailand is operating on top of what appears to be a very solid foundation. Whether or not this is a bubble and if it can maintain its momentum, we’ll see. But I’m betting we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.