Thai and Indonesian Tech Ecosystems

I managed to get into Bangkok and meet tons of people working in the tech sector in South East Asia, Africa, and more regions, because I attended the ITU (International Telcom Union) conference. One of the major topics for the conference where bringing access to the world at wide, and this would be possible as spectrum and all the telecommunication technology especially for 5G will help reduce cost and telcos having more play on profiting for data, opposed to just voice.

The main challenge is just not providing connectivity access to the next 4 billion people only, but to also content that makes sense for them, and awareness is key. Therefore it was just clear to me that more partnerships are needed between telcos and startups.

Regarding the Thai tech ecosystem. I met with the General Partner of TechGrind Pavel Laletin, also met with Kelly Payakvichien community manager of HUBBA space. The overall takeaway was that the Thai tech ecosystem is quite vibrant with a lot of expats, but the overall gap is access to funding, mentors, and a global vision from entrepreneurs.

When I first arrived in Jakarta I noticed hundreds of motorcycles and all the using their smartphones and waiting for requests from users who need a ride. They all have their respective shirts from the on-demand services from GoJek (Indonesia), Grab (Singapore) and UberMoto. It’s really impressive to see all those motors looking at their smartphones. Penetration is huge in for these sectors in Indonesia.

I was also had the opportunity to give feedback to startups from the Founders Institute event. Thanks to Boye Hartmann and Alain Zain from Y Group Asia who ran the event.

Finally, we got to organize a GlobalSouthTechMeetup in Jakarta and Bangkok. And I got to meet very interesting entrepreneurs. Innovation is happening all over the world and we are happy to be active participants in this huge wave.