The National Innovation Agency (NIA) is teaming up with the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), the Board of Investment (BoI), and international partners to help local startups enter the global market through investment mechanisms and launching pads.
The move is part of the NIA's goal of making Thailand an "innovation nation".
Over the past 15 years, the NIA has supported over 3,133 innovative projects worth around 3.58 billion baht, leading to an investment value of around 50.3 billion baht. The NIA aims to have three unicorn startups within three years.
"The NIA will focus on driving growth of existing startups through creating demand in the domestic market with government procurement and bringing the startups to the global market to make them attract investment from Southeast Asian regional players," said NIA executive director Krithpaka Boonfueng.
In fiscal year 2025, the NIA is expected to receive 70 million baht for its "recoverable grant" under its corporate co-funding scheme, and around 100 million baht for promoting soft power innovation.
NIA's corporate co-funding scheme mainly invests in startups at the seed to pre-series A levels by investing up to 10 million baht. The startups have to eventually return the funds to the NIA within five years. The scheme has nine investors registered with the NIA as partners for co-investment in the startups.
The FTI has FTI Innovation One, worth 1 billion baht, which will invest 20-30 million baht per deal in seed to Pre Series A. The latter will have to return the funding within three years.
The NIA is collaborating with the BoI, with the latter having debuted in July 2024 a new matching fund worth 1 billion baht per year. It aims to invest in high growth potential startups in 13 targeted industries ranging from 20-50 million baht each.
The investment criteria is that the startups have to have had investors in the past injecting funds of at least 15 million baht.
In the near future, the NIA will establish a private equity trust with a 1-billion-baht fund.
"By collaborating with other funding agencies for seamless matching funds in different stages of business and to avoid redundant investments, this will strengthen local startup capital and increase their competitiveness at the international level," said Ms Krithpaka.
The NIA also offers acceleration programmes in four areas: food technology, agricultural technology, health technology, and climate tech.
"We noticed that successful global startups have multinational executives as chief technology officers and chief executives with a global mindset," said Ms Krithpaka.
Moreover, the NIA has collaborated with the Program Management Unit for Competitiveness and the Swedish embassy to help local startups expand their market in Nordic countries and collaborate with their startups to open markets in Southeast Asia.
Ms Krithpaka added that the NIA also held discussions with Lithuania to collaborate in fintech, including cybersecurity and life science.
Pariwat Wongsamran, NIA's deputy executive director of innovation system, added that the NIA has international partners that are partnering with local startups and opening up the market for these startups.
The NIA has partnered with major Japanese cities such as Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka, and the Japan External Trade Organization, or Jetro Bangkok. Fukuoka is interested in climate tech.
In addition, the NIA has partnered with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Hong Kong Science Park and Invest Hong Kong to support local startups on the feasibility test, sandbox, and trial in the market. Hong Kong is very interested in health tech.
"Hong Kong will lead us via the Greater Bay Area to the China market," said Mr Pariwat.
Y&Archer, one of the three largest startup incubators and accelerators in South Korea, is interested in early stage startups in Thailand with an investment plan of US$50,000-200,000 per deal, he added.