Phuket as start-up hub in Thailand 4.0

Govt vows to turn island of Phuket into hub for high-tech startup businesses as well as a smart city driven by computing technology & networks.

TECHNOLOGY & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Phuket as start-up hub in Thailand 4.0

17/09/2016
Achadtaya Chuenniran

The government has vowed to turn the island province of Phuket into a hub for high-tech start-up businesses as well as a so-called smart city.

This is part of the government's new Thailand 4.0 economic model, which focuses on technological innovation and digital development.

START-UP THAILAND & DIGITAL THAILAND 2016

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Friday presided over the opening of ''Start-up Thailand and Digital Thailand 2016'' event in Phuket, organised by the Science and Technology Ministry, the newly-established Ministry of Digital Economy and Society.

Addressing the gathering, Gen Prayut stressed the need for all sectors to help each other to strengthen society, and said big businesses should support small- and medium-sized businesses or enterprises (SMEs), which are estimated at 1 million, without leaving anyone behind.

Science and Technology Minister Pichet Durongkaveroj said the government has attached importance to the development of start-up businesses, that are seen as the foundation of the country's economy.

SMART CITY PHUKET

The government has seen Phuket's potential for development as a Smart City (read more here).

The island province has been chosen as a digital super cluster for economic development, along with Chiang Mai.

This is according to permanent-secretary of the new Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, Songporn Komolsuradej.

Plans are to develop information and technology (IT) infrastructure and networks in Phuket.

This includes building a network of hi-speed broadband internet, increasing the free Wi-Fi spots to 1,000, among other things, Ms Songporn said.

Last September, the cabinet approved placing the super clusters in nine provinces.

The food processing, medical services and digital clusters will be located in Chiang Mai and Phuket.

HIGH-TECH START-UPS

Startup businesses in Thailand are still at the "exploration" stage, and the market size for the businesses is relatively small.

This is according to Kanchanok Bunsupaporn, an analyst of Siam Commercial Bank's research unit. 

Last year's investment in start-ups were valued only at US$32 million (1.1 billion baht), with most businesses concentrated in e-commerce.

However, she said the government has a clear policy to promote start-ups with a target to create at least 10,000 new start-ups in 2018.

Several measures have been rolled out to boost their growth, such as tax incentives, and the establishment of a 10-billion-baht digital economy fund to support the development of technology start-ups.

ATTRACTING NEW TALENT FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Steps have been taken to spur the growth of businesses and attract new talent from around the world to Thailand.

Legislation has been amended to encourage investment in startup businesses, and create an environment conducive to the businesses, Mr Pichet said.

He added the event is part of the government's efforts to usher in the economy of innovation and creativity under the Thailand 4.0 model.

The Phuket event builds on the successes of the previous similar events held in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen, he said.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The 'exploration stage' of start-up businesses in Thailand arguably started during the dot-com boom of the 1990s and 2000s.

For over a decade, Thailand already has has many small software parks in operation, set up to encourage small innovative high-tech startups.

Phuket's software park opened in 2008 (see here, here, & facebook here).

During the dot.com boom there was discussion of immigration reform.

Immigration reform would have allowed easier long-term visas for the sort of tech-savy computer engineers that found small but succcessful high-tech start-up businesses. 

As anyone who ever watched the hit TV series Silicon Valley (see here) or read the biography of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates knows, tech start-ups are typically businesses that begin with small amounts of money in the garage of someone's home.

Not the mega- corporations with large amouns of money to invest, traditionally targeted by the Board of Investment (BoI) of Thailand's government for special privileges and visas.

Sergey Brin, the founder of Google, was a poor graduate student from Russia at Stanford University in Silicon Valley.

Sergey Brin was not rich and did not have the large amounts of money that BoI requires of investors when he founded Google.

In fact, many of the most successful high-tech start-up founders in the US were foreign immigrants to the US.

This points to the likeliest area of reform to bear fruit for high-tech start-ups, namely immigration reform.

An easy long-term visa policy, if not outright permanent residence status (green card), for promising but not wealthy computer engineers would perhaps be the best way to populate Thailand with competitive world-class high-tech start-ups (see recent article on how Thailand trails even Japan here). 

But before this would be possible, getting over the common mindset that these engineers were "stealing" something from Thailand by working here would have to be overcome.

It would, instead, be a win-win situation for both Thais and those foreigners.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/1087881/phuket-to-pioneer-digital-drive

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