May 14, 2019 – dtac has made an announcement of the 15 startup finalists to participate in the dtac accelerate batch 7 program. The finalists, announced on Pitch Day, will receive seed funding, ranging from 500,000 – 1,500,000 baht per team and commercialization support from dtac, worth more than 100 million baht. They will also be participating in an intensive boot camp that runs from May to August 2019. The final pitch and the announcement of winners will take place on Demo Day in September 2019. The 15 finalists include:
- Arincare – Health Tech startup providing easy-to-use pharmacy management system, including stock management, to help reduce cost and increase profit
- Eureka! – Provide career advisory services using AI to match candidates with job openings based on employer’s corporate culture and candidate’s unique skills
- Fingas – Online marketplace facilitating selling and buying cooking gas with ease
- Foodie – Platform for online food ordering and delivery for restaurants
- Hisobus – Online platform for bus and van rentals, based on the sharing economy or gig economy concept
- Instawash – Online platform providing premium, onsite car wash service at customer’s place
- Kinkao – Provide free lunch as company’s benefits to its employees, delivering happiness to both organization and employees
- LING – Area measurement application that facilitates land buying and selling and map making of agricultural lands
- Loops – Provide ride-sharing services before and after concerts or entertainment events
- Skooldio – Education Tech startup provides classroom and online lessons on high-demand skills, such as programming, data science, design thinking, and digital business
- Sneak – Picture-based trip planner
- System Stone – Online platform that helps engineers manage preventive maintenance activities, including work order and spare parts management directly from their mobile phones
- Trash Lucky – Creator of “Trash Lucky” campaign that offers lucky draw coupons in exchange of recyclable trashes
- Viabus – Real-time public transport bus tracking and navigation application around Bangkok Metropolitan
- Ztrus – accounting tool for SMEs and large companies
Mr. Sompoat Chansomboon, Managing Director of dtac accelerate, said, “This year, we have seen a significant growth in the Thai startup market and an increasing number of domain experts that help solve business problems companies in various industries are facing. More startups are shifting their business model from B2C (Business to Consumer) to B2B (Business to Business), which focuses on providing industry tech solutions as a tool to help improve efficiency in large companies. It is a good phenomenon as large companies are ready to invest and help startups grow their platform and build a scalable business model much faster.”
Although many startups are B2B focused, dtac accelerate recognizes that ‘scalability’ is still a key issue for all startups, who have to be able to scale up according to market demands. Startups who can demonstrate their ability to scale up are more likely to impress mentors. Meanwhile, several startups will have to go back and work on their scalability to overcome the problem. This is the area that needs to be focused on next year.”
The 15 startup finalists will participate in the boot camp and receive coaching from world-class mentors, including Jabob Greenshpan, known as the Yoda of UX/UI, who lectures creative user interface and is part of the advisory board of the Google Launchpad Accelerator program; Jake Knapp, the author of the New York Times best-selling book “Sprint” will lecture the Design Sprint process to analyze customer problems and build and test the prototype in 5 days; Nir Eyal, whose Hooked Model is behind the success of Facebook and Instagram; and Hai Habot, one of the world’s top OKR guru and expert in tools from Google Cloud, Facebook, and AWS etc.
