Thailand aims to be the world’s top 20 startup nation

National Innovation Agency (NIA) sets a target to be top 20 startup nation in the world, the goal is in line with a creation of 3,000 innovation-driven enterprises and 50,000 jobs by 2021.

Speaking at the “NEA Startup Symposium : The Power of Creativity & Innovation”, hosted by Commerce Ministry’s Department of International Trade Promotion and New Economy Agency (NEA), Ms. Theresa Mathawaphan, NIA deputy executive director said that Thailand aims to be the world’s top 20 startup nation. To achieve the goal, collaboration of every party is important. The support by the government sector has been increasingly done for these couple years.

Thailand has more than 120 venture capitalists at present, and 70 of them are corporate VCs. There are currently some 1,700 startups registered with NIA and the actual figure should be more than this, said Ms. Theresa.

“We would like to build a startup nation as this will help boost the economic growth of the country with a goal to create 3,000 innovation-driven enterprises which is accounted for 5% of the country’s GDP,” she said, adding that this also create at least 50,000 jobs by 2021.

Top five startup nations in the world today are:  Israel, the world’s model of startup nation now becomes a high-tech startup powerhouse , USA is the tech startup centre where startups can create more than five times of jobs than the old companies. UK is the global fintech capital, India the nation of job creators, while China is the mass maker space where most valuable AI startups are located.

Southeast Asia where startups are rife, countries with vibrant startup culture include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia.