The programme also accentuates Digital Ventures’ vision to make Thailand one of the best start-up ecosystems in Southeast Asia.
The first 10 teams chosen from more than 140 applicants are now attending an intensive workshop designed to help them put together actionable plans for expansion in Thailand as well as overseas.
Support comes from veteran industrial specialists and global business partners like Baker & McKenzie, PrimeStreet Advisory, Google, Microsoft and Ananda Development.
Thana Thienachariya, executive chairman of Digital Ventures, said yesterday that the support from SCB and business partners from various industries comprised essential knowledge for doing business, especially in financial, legal and technological aspects, and Bt300,000 for each team for product development.
The teams can have an opportunity to work with SCB in bringing their ideas to fruition by developing products for the bank’s customers in the future.
Teams with viable projects will also have the chance to receive a minimum Bt1 million in seed money from SCB after finishing the programme.
Charle Charoenphan, accelerator head at Digital Ventures, said the company had seen some Thai start-ups with good potential, but they cannot grow their business as well and as fast as they should because of the lack of funds, necessary business knowledge, and most important, a strong customer base.
DVA is claimed to be the best accelerator programme for Thailand and Southeast Asia, with the ambition to help start-ups achieve at least 20-per-cent growth.
The first three months of the course provide fundamental knowledge for business preparedness, with the Start-up Essential Programme led by Surawat Promyothin, legal knowledge from Baker & McKenzie and financial knowledge from PrimeStreet Advisory.
The next three months will be spent on accelerating growth with a hacking technique from Chris Tweten.
Each team will be matched with a business specialist who is also their dedicated mentor for experience sharing and advice, as well as a core mentor who steps in to set the key performance indicators for each team and conduct weekly follow-ups.
Another key strength of the programme is that each team will have the opportunity to seek professional advice on investment and technology from the management team of Digital Ventures.
The first batch of 10 teams comprises both financial and non-financial businesses.
Fintech businesses are, for example, KYC Chain, or Know Your Customer service on Blockchain, for enhanced financial transaction experience in the future; Refinn, a low-interest refinance service platform; and PeerPower, a personal-loan service.
Some non-financial businesses are PetInsure, the first online pet-insurance service in Thailand, and Seekster, a job-hunting app for people in general and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand reported a net profit of Bt208.99 billion in the third quarter of this year, a 251.68-per-cent rise from the same period last year, supported by falling costs and no losses from foreign-exchange rates and impairment.
Meanwhile, companies listed on Market for Alternative Investment reported a 34.51-per-cent year-on-year increase in net profit to Bt1.96 billion in the quarter. As for the first nine months of 2016, it reported a combined net profit of Bt6.14 billion, a 2.05-per-cent rise from a year earlier, said Santi Karanand, |SET senior executive vice president.
He added that the improved overall performance of Thai listed companies in the first nine months corresponded to the macroeconomic factors that have recovered mainly from services and consumer business.
There were nine sectors that reported growth in total sales, net profits and gross profit margin in the January-September |period compared with the same period last year. They were banking, property development, food and beverage, steel, fashion, |packaging, home and office products, professional services, and paper and printing materials.

RINGGIT SLIDES AGAINST SINGDOLLAR
The battered Malaysian ringgit has fallen to its weakest level in more than a year against the Singapore dollar.
One Singdollar could buy 3.11 ringgit  yesterday, the weakest the Malaysian currency has been since last September.
The ringgit also slid to 4.433 against the US dollar – its weakest since January.
The ringgit has been Asia’s worst-performing currency since Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election on November 8, which sparked a global sell-off in emerging markets.
Malaysia’s central bank has ordered foreign banks to stop offshore speculation in |the ringgit, warning of “prompt supervisory intervention” against those trading the |ringgit in the offshore market. – The Straits Times

Vithan Charoenphon, EIC head analyst for the service sector, said yesterday that over the past five to seven years, tourism had grown by 13 per cent annually, compared with 7-8 per cent in the years before 2010.
Chinese tourists are the key to the nation’s tourism growth.

Chinese are the No 1 travellers to Thailand, contributing 30 per cent of the total.

The EIC forecasts the number of tourists next year at 37.3 million against the 33.8 million expected this year.
However, tourism is likely to depend on Chinese tourists too heavily, and those people have strong bargaining power with merchants in Thailand, especially hotels. That means hotels will not be able to raise their room rates.
In case of a slowdown in the flow of Chinese tourists to Thailand, the tourism industry will be in big trouble, and this will drag on the growth of gross domestic product, as tourism’s share of GDP is 11 per cent.
Thailand needs to adjust to stay competitive, the EIC says.
India and Indonesia are two potential markets for Thai tourism because of their large populations and growing middle classes.
Both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund predict healthy GDP growth for India and Indonesia, particularly the former, which is expected to boast the world’s largest population in 15 years.
The concentration of tourists in the same attractions for many years might impede the growth of the tourism industry in the long term.
Medical and MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) tourism are good prospects if Thailand can target countries with high healthcare costs like Australia, Germany and France or countries with low-quality services like Myanmar.
However, development of new segments will support long-term growth.
The country should attract new visitors by encouraging film shoots here, building more attractions like amusement parks and hosting major sport events.
For instance, new government incentives can help bring in more film productions and the government can help incentivise construction of more tourist attractions such as theme parks.

Gross written premium (GWP) from all distribution channels was Bt22 billion for the period, up 9 per cent year on year, while first year premium (FYP) grew 11 per cent to Bt4.3 billion.
President and chief executive officer Bryan Smith said that in the current low-interest-rate environment, and with customers’ demand for health coverage and the high inflation in medical costs likely to continue, Allianz Ayudhya had a clear vision to become the market leader in life and health protection.
“This year, the company has continuously developed and enhanced many protection offerings to our customers.
“Our largest success has been with our popular ‘My Health Plus Extra’ product, which, to date, has generated around Bt100 million FYP.
“With the strong focus on protection offerings for our customers, the proportion of protection premium for Allianz Ayudhya has reached 37 per cent of total premiums for the first time in our 65-year history. This reflects the successful implementation of our protection strategy that we began to implement three years ago.
“During the last few months of 2016, with our strong customer focus and multi-channel distribution, we are confident that we can achieve our target of Bt6.1 billion in FYP and total gross written premium of Bt31 billion by the end of the year,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, Allianz Group, the major shareholder of Allianz Ayudhya Assurance, has reported that the group’s performance in the first nine months will keep Allianz on track for its full-year profit target.
Total revenues decreased by 3.2 per cent to 92.4 billion euros (about Bt3.5 trillion) for the first nine months of 2016.
Operating profit increased 1.7 per cent to 8.0 billion euros, driven by the property and casualty segment and, to a lesser extent, asset management. The life and health segment posted an increase in operating profit. The non-operating result was affected by a lower investment result and the classification of the South Korean business as “held for sale”.
Overall, net income attributable to shareholders was 5.1 billion euros, down 1.1 per cent from the first nine months of 2015.
“Efforts to develop our business in a very difficult environment are paying off,” said Dieter Wemmer, chief financial officer of Allianz SE. “We’re seeing sustainable profitable growth in many businesses.
“Improvements from our renewal agenda are bearing fruit and keeping us on track to reach our operating-profit target for the full year of 10.5 billion euros, give or take 500 million euros.”

People across the country celebrated the 70th year of his accession to the throne this year. During his reign he worked on a lot of successful projects, including improving the living conditions of his subjects, especially those in the remote rural areas, with more than 3,000 development projects initiated by the King and implemented throughout the country.
We cannot deny that his Majesty the King is one of the major reasons Thailand has been able to develop more successfully than other countries.
Last month, the author had a chance to make an academic presentation about infrastructure topics in Shenzhen, China. I had not been to China for many years, and I found that this city had grown very fast. Actually, Shenzhen was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world during the 1990s and 2000s.
Starting from a small fishing town – Shenzhen is located on the southern tip of the Chinese mainland and on the east bank of the Pearl River, neighbouring Hong Kong – it has grown into a modern metropolis.
It became China’s first special economic zone in 1980. The city now is the high-tech and manufacturing hub of southern China, and home to the world’s third-busiest container port and the fourth-busiest airport on the Chinese mainland.
In the meantime, another part of the world with a very influential economy, the United States, just elected a new president, Donald Trump. His campaign reminded me of the old days in 2004, when I was finishing up my PhD in the US. There was a famous TV show called “The Apprentice” that judged the business skills of a group of contestants. Episodes ended with the host eliminating the poorest contributor from the competition, with the words “You’re fired.” And, yes, this was spoken by Trump.
On that show, businesspeople would vie for the show’s prize, a one-year US$250,000 starting contract to run one of Donald Trump’s companies.
I feel that he is a very talented world-class businessman. However, in the reality of national policy, I doubt that being president will be the same as running his own company.
It may not be the same as saying “You’re fired.”
One of the policies he has advertised, international trade protectionism, might not be the first best idea, as all economists around the world, and from real experience, like Shenzhen’s for example, know that trade creates more prosperity, more specialisation and more efficient use of the world’s resources. One country can consume products that it cannot produce itself and can export the commodities of which it has an excess.
I admit that some trade theorists have backed away from the assumption of constant returns, and some argue that using protectionist measures to build up a huge industrial base in certain industries will then allow those sectors to dominate the world market.
Nevertheless, when one country wants to protect trade too much, for sure, its trading partners can do the same. The world is working on making trade fairer, but overly strict protectionism may not be a good idea in this regard.
One thing I can expect is that this will not be an easy road for the new president, especially when the US is well known as one of the world’s largest consumers of all products from across the world, and is the land of the melting pot.

Apirada Chinprateep PhD is assistant professor at the School of Development Economics, National Institute of Development Administration.