In Thailand, eBay said it would enable the faster handling of paid orders, saving eBay sellers time and money through an easy-to-use system that is available to them at no charge.

eBay is also collaborating with Thailand Post to offer special discounts and privileges to sellers who use eBay SeaPass together with Thailand Post’s ePacket service.

Boonphan Boonprayoon of eBay Thailand said: “To help eBay sellers in Thailand and Southeast Asia effectively run a borderless business in our global online marketplace, eBay developed ‘eBay SeaPass.

“Thai sellers will benefit from this automated fulfilment and shipping process when they ship items from Thailand to buyers worldwide, increasing both the speed and convenience of order processing and tracking.

“It enables fast and easy printing of shipping labels, so sellers can pick and pack items more quickly.

Until December 31, eBay sellers will get a special Bt10 discount on the ePacket shipping fee for each item shipped

Thailand Post’s ePacket service is currently available for China, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Maldives, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, and the United States. Germany, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Macau will be added to the ePacket service on October 1.

The event brings decision makers from the private and public sectors to network and discuss expectations for the future of Thailand’s industrial development.

The theme for Delta’s first industry summit-Innovations for Smart Cities-aims to inspire ideas and spur conversation on the best ways to drive Thai cities towards a more data-driven, intelligent digital economy.

Smart cities leverage Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to collect data and improve the quality of life for urban dwellers. The government’s Thailand 4.0 initiative aims to develop smart cities to harness the country’s unique advantages and facilitate a leapfrog in economic development.

“Smart cities are the best answer to the challenges and opportunities of the modern world,” said Delta president Hsieh Shen-yen. “Societies wishing to succeed in the current global landscape must make conscious, intelligent use of opportunities from technology. As global citizens, we must create ideal work environments and lifestyles that fuel sustainable economic growth,” he said.

Programmes to develop smart cities are underway in Phuket, Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen.

The Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) revitalisation plan for the industrial cities of Chachoengsao, Chon Buri and Rayong also prioritises smart industry and business development.

While these pilot programmes may be transforming the provinces, the sheer scale of Bangkok presents many challenges for the capital’s shift to a smart city. Still, the metropolitan government is making efforts to change by incentivising green buildings, modernising public transit and expanding IT systems. The enhanced One Bangkok district aims to further boost intelligence in urban infrastructure.

The matter now moves to the Central Administrative Court where DTAC had already filed a lawsuit on September 6, seeking temporary protection for its 850MHz customers, after the NBTC declined to approve its consumer protection plan before its concession ended after midnight on September 15, 2018

The company’s share price yesterday fell 5.14 per cent to close at Bt41.50.

DTAC chief corporate affairs and business development officer, Rajiv Bawa, said yesterday that DTAC acknowledged the NBTC resolution and the company was awaiting the court’s order on the matter.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said that once the court makes a ruling on the case, the NBTC was ready to comply with the order.

Six out of seven commissioners voted 4:2 yesterday. One commissioner is on an overseas trip.

The majority of the commissioners said there was no justification to grant DTAC the remedy period as the number of its 850MHz customers remaining in the concession was not enough to justify DTAC’s entry into the remedy period.

As of Sunday, DTAC still had around 94,625 customers on the 850MHz concession, of which around 60,000 are human users and the rest machines.

The remedy period is a temporary duration that the NBTC provides to telecom operators to continue to offer service after the concession ends, so as to give time to consumers to migrate to other networks.

Earlier, DTAC had said that around 1 million of its group customers will be hit if the NBTC declined to grant the remedy period to its 850MHz subscribers before the concession ended.

Around 90,000 are those using 850MHz in the concession and the rest of over 1 million are subscribers of its subsidiary DTAC TriNet, who regularly roam with the 850MHz network.

However, Takorn said that the watchdog counted only those in the concession.

Takorn said that the NBTC had earlier granted remedy periods to DTAC’s competitors, as it was NBTC failure to hold the auctions of their spectra before their concession ended.

In DTAC’s case, the auctions had been held before the concession ended. CAT has granted the concession to DTAC to operate the 1800MHz and 850MHz services. The NBTC has reclaimed these bands and rebanded the 850MHz as 900MHz, and put them up for auctions in August.

However, no one bid for the 900MHz but only 1800MHz.

DTAC recently said that it had prepared a raft of measures to mitigate the impact of the end of concession on its customers.

It has prepared several consumer-protection measures, including aggressive expansion of its 2.1GHz network to make up for the potential shutdown of the 850MHz network.

The company also has proactively reached out to its customers with planned compensation proposals for network problems they may experience in the coming weeks.

Narongpon Boonsonaisan, the head of InVent, a corporate venture capital project of Intouch holding, said his company has invested Bt40 million in Choco Card Enterprise.

“I think Choco Card Enterprise has a high potential to provide CRM and point of sale [PoS] platforms to support SMEs and help them scale up in the market. SMEs can also easily access the services online. The CRM platform is an essential part for creating business growth. There are more than 3 million SMEs in the country, and the CRM platform will allow them to seize opportunities and boost their competitiveness,” Narongpon explained.

Sirasit Suriyapattanapong, CEO of Choco Card Enterprise, said his company’s CRM platform also offers loyalty programmes. Choco Card is currently focusing on Bangkok, but plans to expand to Chon Buri, Chiang Mai and Phuket in the near future.

SMEs are provided software and other services at monthly fees starting from Bt2,500.

Choco Card’s next step will be to provide rewards as a service (RaaS) in collaboration with the Government Savings Bank and micro CRM services for businesses that want to know their customers.

The firm currently has some 1,300 SMEs as clients, and expects to boost this number to 5,000 in the next three years. It also eyes boosting its revenue to Bt150 million to Bt200 million during the same period.

Meanwhile, InVent’s Narongpon said his company will spend some Bt100 million in three emerging start-ups working in areas such as blockchain, digital lifestyle technology, tourism and location base technology based service.

He said InVent now has 12 starts-up in its portfolio, namely Ookbee, MediTech, Infinity Levels, Playbasis, Goftdigg, Wongnai, Omnivirt, Digio, Event Pop, ShopBack, YDM Thailand and Choco Card Enterprsie.

The firm has already exited two start-ups – ShopSpot and Computerlogy – which gave it a return on investment of around 25 per cent.

The firm also plans to list Wongnai in the Market for Alternative Investment by 2020.

The company yesterday made an official announcement of its partnership with the online travel-sharing community, travelbook, and the online platform for booking local tours and activities in Asia, eOasia, with all partners banking on synergy to expand their growth.

Cle is founder and chief executive officer of investment firm Rising Sun Merchant Services Pte Ltd, which recently invested in HotelQuickly, eOasia and travelbook. This has made him become executive chairman of HotelQuickly, eOasia and travelbook.

So far there have been 5 million downloads of the HotelQuickly app and an average of 2.8-3.2 million users are returning to use the platform. It aims to have between 15-20 million active users by the end of 2019, he added.

HotelQuickly will also introduce chatbots on its web page in October 2018, he said. Established in 2012, HotelQuickly is one of the fastest growing hotel booking platforms, with millions of users and more than 450,000 hotels across 28,000 destinations in 219 countries and territories. Its platform is available in 16 languages, with offices in Hong Kong, San Francisco, Singapore and Sydney.

Before Rising Sun Merchant Services’ investment in these three companies, HotelQuickly had its own global head office in Bangkok, eOasia’s operations were in Singapore and travelbook was headquartered in US. With the entry of Rising Sun Merchant Services, all will be relocated to |the same new office on Silom Road. According to HotelQuickly, the top travel destinations booked globally are New York, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Tokyo and Bangkok. Meanwhile, the top travel destinations in Thailand booked by HotelQuickly users are Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Koh Lanta, Krabi and Koh Samui, with an average stay of between 5-7 days.

The average age of HotelQuickly users is 30, with most booking 4-5-star chain hotels and boutique stays, as well as families booking for vacations and solo travellers for leisure and business.

He explained that the growing popularity of global social networks including Facebook and Instagram among people in Myanmar motivated him to start creating a local social platform. So, three months ago, he established a company with a team of some 20 young technicians.

“Smartphone penetration is really high in Myanmar, and we are among the highest data consuming countries in Asia-Pacific. When you go around, you will see that everybody is using mobile data to access their social media accounts,” he said.

“A lot of Myanmar people who use a smartphone may not have an e-mail address, but I am sure all of them have access to at least one of the popular social networks, mostly Facebook. I noticed that many countries have their own social networks. For example, VK is widely used in Russia and Baidu is the most popular in China. Then I felt that Myanmar should have its own social network, so I tried to work on that.”

In the four days since its launch on September 8, MM Social got more than 10,000 members and Yan Naing Myint foresees a spike in users as soon as the mobile app is launched early next month. In fact, he expects a five-fold increase in the number of users by the end of this year.

“An average of 3,000 users usually sign up to create their own accounts on our website every day. And we are now working on the development of our mobile application so it will be available to the public by the first week of October,” he said.

He seems confident of long-term growth, thanks to Myanmar users’ preference for mobile applications rather than websites. To him, software development and infrastructure maintenance are equally important to ensure the success of MM Social.

“Our aim is to reach out to the whole nation within one year after the launch. We hope many people living in all parts of the country will get to know about MM Social and enjoy using it in the next few years. We expect commercial benefits within eight months from now,” he said.

However, he did admit that it would take a long time for his platform to be able to compete with global giants such as Facebook and Instagram. Despite the unwillingness to seek funding from international partners, Yan Naing Myint is optimistic about the company’s future, as he believes more users will enjoy the features of MM Social developed in the local context in the longer term.

Like other social networks, MM Social allows users to create their own accounts, pages and groups which includes similar features such as user profile, add friend, follow, like, share, comment and text messages. Customer care service will also be available to help address users’ problems and users’ information and data will be protected in line with existing laws and Myanmar culture, he said.

Meanwhile, there is some speculation that MM Social is backed by the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) as it was launched less than two weeks after Facebook removed 19 accounts and 52 pages controlled by military officials and followed by some 12 million people. Facebook said this was done to prevent the spread of hate and misinformation via its platform.

Yet, Yan Naing Myint was quick to deny this, saying it is just a coincidence.

He also promised to prevent any moves to spread hate speech and hoaxes on the network by daily monitoring and removing fake accounts.

“We will monitor users’ posts in the Myanmar context. We have also partnered with third-party organisations to seek advice on legal issues. We believe fake news and hate speech originate from fake accounts, so we will remove them later,” he said.

“At the same time, we are now trying to add more features for users’ convenience. And will also try to make our app 100 per cent functional.”

In a bid to ensure a well-protected database and infrastructure, the company offers a “bug bounty” programme, a crowdsourcing initiative that rewards individuals for discovering and reporting software bugs to counter potential cyber attacks. It also requests the users’ e-mail address and mobile phone number for verification to create an account or page. For now, only Myanmar mobile numbers are accepted to ensure the user lives in the country.

Yan Naing Myint said the network would also help improve Myanmar’s income.

“Now businesses in Myanmar usually spend a fortune on boosting posts on their Facebook pages as part of their advertising campaigns. But, our country does not get anything in return. For instance, if 1,000 pages spend just US$10 [Bt320] a day, you can imagine how much Facebook earns from Myanmar businesses every year. At MM Social, we will pay tax to the government regularly, which will increase the national income,” he said.

This year, the event achieved a new milestone with the highest-ever sales performance in Shopee’s history, with a total of over 5.8 million orders recorded; amounting to 3 times more than an average day.

Over 15 million items were sold within 24 hours and interestingly on September 9, the number of items sold across the region exceeded 99,999 in less than 9 minutes, according to Shopee’s press statement.

Terence Pang, Chief Operating Office of said, “As the third installment of Shopee’s annual regional shopping event, this year’s 9.9 Super Shopping Day is our biggest one yet. The performance of this year’s campaign far exceeded our expectations on all fronts, and we are proud to have achieved record-breaking sales with the support of our loyal Shopee users, brands and partners.”

The event boasted the support of more than 7 million sellers, and 10,000 brands across the region. In Thailand, sellers and brands enjoyed extended reach and sales uplift, with Eloop, BigC, and Unilever topping the list of best-performing brands during Shopee 9.9 Super Shopping Day.

Health & Beauty, Baby & Toys, and Mobile & Gadgets also emerged as the top performing categories as Thais shopped over the 12-day event from August 29 to September 9. Shopee’s huge assortment of health and beauty products was a key attraction as both men and women bought hundreds of thousands of cosmetics, skincare, and other health items during the event.

The debut of back-to-back theme days during this year’s event proved to be highly popular. In Thailand, Super Flash Sale Day on August 29 was a highlight, with a large spike in users shopping a wide range of flash deals. Super Beauty Day on September 3 was also a huge hit, with whitening lotions, night creams, and lip balms emerging as the top 3 purchased products.

As part of this year’s 9.9 celebrations, Shopee also launched the first-ever Super Brands Festival on Aug 31, featuring the largest collection of exciting deals from leading brands on Shopee Mall. Roza, Slumberland, and Coca-Cola saw the greatest boost in orders as shoppers stocked up on their favourite items from top brands.

“We would like to thank everyone who has played a part in helping to make Shopee 9.9 Super Shopping Day a tremendous success. We look forward to bringing even more exciting initiatives in the months ahead, including our upcoming 11.11 shopping event,” closed Pang.

It has gradually begun to overhaul the fleet of 20 aircrafts since the beginning of 2018 and is expected to complete in the next three years, according to its press release.

Currently, THAI Smile operates 10 domestic routes, namely Chiang Mai, Phuket, Khon Kaen, Chiang Rai, Hat Yai, Ubon Ratchathani, Udon Thani, Surat Thani, Narathiwat, Krabi.

The cross-country routes are between Chiang Mai and Phuket with 18 international routes to Yangon, Penang, Changsha, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, Gaya, Varanasi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mandalay, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Kuala Lumpur, Kaohsiung, Luang Prabang and Mumbai.

THAI Smile plans to open new routes Bangkok-Hong Kong And Phuket – Hong Kong soon. For more details and make a flight reservation, please visit http://www.thaismileair.com or call Smile Service Center 1181 or 0 2118 8888 and Smile Agents nationwide.