Startup today is not only about solving pain but more about creating real gain

By Sittipong Sirimaskasem, CEO&Founder of RGB72

Not long after the completion of Startup Thailand 2018, then came the Unbound Innovfest 2018 in Singapore and Rise Conference in Hong Kong.

The three events are all about Innovation, technology, business and Startup.

The common ideas that could be observed from the event in Thailand and Singapore is that startups should be able to really solve the pain, and seriously make the real gain in the businesses too.

Although startups in Thailand recently spread among university students, but the ideas of startup do not decline. Mostly Thai startups focus on solving problems of the communities, for example, wild elephants area control system to prevent them from entering the villages,  liquid gas production and gas quantity measurement device.

Thai startup like Treasurist which helps select proper fund for users does not just solve problems in fund selection but also provide better gains for users too.

Toolmorrow, one of the most popular social enterprises in social media, was not created to solve problem but create new viewpoints to society.

These are all startups that not only solve problems but create real gain to users.

The Innovfest 2018 in Singapore saw participants from over 100 countries from all over the world. The obvious things were the use of deep learning and artificial intelligent which were involved in the problem-solving and creating gains. For example, motion sensor which is used together with AI, it will help survey the behavior of marine animals to enhance efficiency in helping the marine animals. The face recognition is used to detect emotion and people satisfaction to enhance efficiency in taking care of customers. The National Gallery Singapore has used the system to detect movement of visitors while visiting the gallery, so they can develop the journey for gallery visit in the future.

So we see the future trend of startups which should both focus on solving problems as well as creating real gains.

Three years ago, it was afraid that startup would become the competitors of SME. But today we realize that startups do have ideas and technologies that can help SMEs. So, not only startups can have exponential growth, so do the SMEs as well.