TENCENT, operating in Thailand for the past 20 years, has been busy expanding its service platforms. Three years ago the Chinese technology giant added the music streaming service JOOX and in 2018, the games platform PUBG.

In its latest venture, Tencent Thailand has this year added video steaming, with the aim of soon becoming the market leader.

In China, Tencent’s content features three main digital service platforms – for music, games and video streaming. Tencent Thailand now matches its parent in providing the same portfolios.

Tencent in China first launched its video steaming platform under the name Tencent Video in 2011 and began producing original content the following year. Its content comes from three sources – its own content, hiring content producers to supply the platform, and buying from content service providers.

In China, there are around 500 million active users per month, and around 89 million people pay a subscription fee.

Kanokporn Prachayaset, head of business development and marketing at Tencent (Thailand), said that this is the first country outside China to bring Tencent’s video streaming service to market under the name WeTV. Because of Tencent’s readiness in both content and infrastructure, the local team convinced the company to launch the new service in Thailand.

“We found that Thais spend a lot of their daily time on different digital services, and saw the huge opportunity to offer a video streaming service to fill out our portfolio,” said Kanokporn.

But why Thailand first? Because the two countries have cultural similarities and Chinese content is a favourite of Thai consumers, she said.

Kanokporn said the company boasts a strong local team able to offer mutual support, especially for offering cross-platform services between Sanook as the No 1 portal in Thailand, JOOX as the No 1 music streaming platform in Thailand, and WeTV, which is expected to become the country’s No 1 video streaming platform.

Thailand is also interesting in terms of market size, with over 50 million internet users. Most Thais are early adopters who welcome giving strong feedback to new services.

“Currently, over 30 million users are on Tencent’s content platform,” noted Kanokporn.

She stressed that the goal is to drive WeTV to become the No 1 video-streaming platform, matching the position Tencent enjoys with its other services in Thailand. For 2019, the aim is to push WeTV to the No 3 spot in the local market.

To achieve these goal, Kanokporn said that the company’s marketing strategies include use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, search engine optimisation (SEO), and YouTube. Tencent Thailand’s promotions will also make use of JOOX and Sanook and key opinion leaders (KOL), or influencers, to promote WeTV in Thailand.

“We will use JOOX as media to offer not only audio and banner ads, but also to offer bundled packages with music and video for VIP subscribers. We will also increase channels on Sanook to facilitate easier access WeTV at wetv.sanook.com,” said Kanokporn.

The business model and revenue streams of WeTV are similar to JOOX, offering freemium and VIP subscription services for users. In this way, it gains revenue comes from advertising under the freemium model and fees under the VIP subscription model.

As the newcomer in the market, it intends to be aggressive in its plan to become No 1 in the future because of its strength in content and in its team.

For content, Tencent Video in China has been strong in original productions. For example, Tencent in China invested the equivalent of around Bt500 million to produce the EverNight series, as original content. The series could gain 5 billion views within a month of launching in China. This kind of content will be exclusive for WeTV users.

Tencent Thailand will use simulcast strategy to bring key content from China to Thai users instantly. For example, it also has variety programs, especially realty TV shows. One popular show is Produce Camp 2019, which Tencent bought under licence from a South Korean company to offer to Tencent Video’s users. Thai users will be able to watch this reality show just one day behind its fans in China.

In terms of teams, Tencent Thailand has strong teams and products in the Thai market, helping it in cross-content and cross-platform activities.

Although Chinese content will be the main fare for WeTV at the beginning, the company aims to go after the mass-market consumers, Kanokporn said

“Therefore, the company will expand to offer many kinds of content, including from Thailand, South Korea and the US,” she said.

“For Thai content, we worked with a local content partner. Now we have at least one official local partner – that is One31, which will offer an exclusive re-run of Thai series. Since early this year there are four titles from One31 on WeTV. We will bring content from Korea and the US to offer on WeTV in May. We have bought content licences and are creating Thai subtitles. We are also bringing premium grade content from Tencent Video to create the Thai sound.”

Initially, the target users of WeTV will be early adopters in Bangkok and in the large cities, with these customers aged between 24 and 40. It will later expand to offer content to cover users aged above 40, with select titles offering Thai sound tracks, Kanokporn said.

She said there are many video streaming service providers in Thailand, and that is a good sign, indicating the readiness of the market.

“The opportunity we see is that there is no significant Chinese content,” she says. “Consumer behaviour is now changing and they have more choices so they will switch between video streaming platforms to follow their favourite content,” she says. “So, stickiness of content is important. Our content includes programs with many episodes and which often run longer than shows in countries.

“Chinese series, on average, have around 40 episodes. More episodes means more chances to catch people’s time spent on screen. Thais on average spend over three hours per day watching video streaming on devices.”

In Thailand, she said, internet users spend an average of 9 hours and 11 minutes online everyday. They watching all kinds of content, including broadcast TV, TV on demand, video streaming, for around three hours and 44 minutes. There is scope to increase the time consumers spend watching content.

WeTV has four content categories: series, variety, anime, and movies. Series account for 80 per cent of the total, but by the end of 2019, they are expected to fall to around 60 per cent. Movies account for 20 to 25 per cent, and variety and anime productions will make up the rest. Chinese content makes up 70 per cent of the total with Thai shows filling out the rest. In May, two more shows will be added, from South Korea and the US. By the end of 2019, Chinese content will drop to around 45 to 50 per cent.

“Next month, we will have around 150 titles and this will increase to 300 titles by the end of this year. WeTV has been available since January this year, but it will be officially launched in June,” said Kanokporn.

She said the beauty of WeTV is that it not only provides video steaming for Thais but will also bring in Thai content.

This content will come from providers who partner with WeTV to distribute on Tencent Video’s platform to capture the huge Chinese market as well.

“This will help create revenue for Thai content owners, brands, and artists,” Kanokporn said.

With initial registered capital of Bt200 million, the short-term investment plans for Thai Digital Energy Development include decentralised distribution in the renewable energy business and digital business for the energy industry. For 2019, the first project to be undertaken is the 12-megawatt Smart University project with Chiang Mai University.

Khemmarat Sartpreecha of Pea Encom said the global transformation of the power business from centralised to decentralised, the use of digital technology, and the introduction of innovations such as blockchain in peer-to-peer energy trading, have made PEA realise the need to change along with the trend.

With the increasing demand for clean energy at both the global and national levels, and the declining cost of renewable energy production, consumers now have more access to renewable energy.

The joint-venture company will promote power production from renewable energy as well as promote digital business through the PEA Hero Platform developed by PEA.

The venture will also promote energy management, along with energy as a service business, among public and private sectors as well as state enterprises. And it will develop total solutions for digital energy products to respond to consumers’ needs.

Investments will be in the power production from renewable energy business, energy saving and energy management systems, and other businesses in digital energy.

“We offer choices in using clean energy for utilising technology to respond to the increasing demand of consumers who are no longer just consumers, but rather prosumers, to create a smart community through innovation.

“They can use applications and smart devices to produce and manage clean energy by themselves,” said Khemmarat.

Bundit Sapianchai, president and chief executive officer of  BCPG, said that BCPG is also focusing on retail business by offering choices to consumers so that they can produce clean energy by themselves at a lower cost.

Solar among options

The joint venture is set to gear to aggregator businesses, especially peer-to-peer energy trading through blockchain technology. That includes smart-city projects, such as the project to install solar rooftop and energy management and energy trading systems among the buildings at Chiang Mai University. Installation of that project has already begun, with total installed capacity of 12 megawatts.

Other projects will involve real estate developers such as Sansiri and SC Asset.

Recently, SC Asset and BCPG launched the “Sun Share Project”, for the first time using blockchain to manage a solar roof system for household consumption and electricity transaction at “Neighbourhood Bangkadi”.

The innovative energy management system is designed to ensure sustainable benefits for customers, and involves Power Ledger as a digital energy partner.

BCPG believes in the democratisation of energy – that everyone has the freedom to use and manage their own energy. In this joint venture, the company will continue working closely with Power Ledger, its digital business partner.

They will together create a business landscape whereby innovation plays a crucial part in a sustainable way for new energy utilisation.

Launched in July last  year, Grab Ventures is Grab’s venture building and venture investments arm.

Through GVV, Grab Ventures offers mentorship and access to the parent company’s vast customer base and technology assets, so that startups can test and scale their services via the Grab ecosystem.

Following the success of its first batch graduates from the GVV programme in January this year, applications for the second intake are open until May 15.

 Thailand has developed around 1,000 local startups and the country expects to have 10,000 of them by 2037.

With GVV, Singapore-based Grab aims to take part in enhancing the incubation ecosystem for Thai startups, connecting them to strategic partners and investors, and forging deals or business matching between startups and Grab.

This aligns with the government’s goal to create a digital hub in Thailand.

The theme for this second batch, which runs from June to August, is “Empowering Micro-Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia”.

Two programme tracks will open. The first is “Empower Farmers”, which includes innovative solutions that help farmers bring affordable, quality fresh groceries to customers across Southeast Asia.

The Empower Farmers track will select up to five  startups from Southeast Asia that are disrupting the traditional fresh-foods supply chain, which includes meats, fruits and vegetables. Startups supplying fresh groceries to SMEs (restaurants, grocery stores) or end-consumers are welcome to apply.

The second track, “Empower Small Businesses”, strives to discover startups that are pioneering innovative solutions to empower small merchants by lowering their costs, simplifying their operations or increasing their income.

Startups in this track will pilot their solutions with Kudo’s agent network in Indonesia.

Participating startups for both tracks will have the opportunity to pilot their solutions within Grab’s ecosystem.

In addition, startups will also get access to Grab’s internal and external network of C-level advisors and experts.  On the technology front, these startups will leverage GrabPlatform resources, such as cloud APIs, as well as Kudo resources, in order to accelerate their product development.

Tarin Thaniyavarn, country head of Grab Thailand, said that the Kingdom’s startup scene is growing at an interesting pace, particularly in the AgTech space.

The Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV) programme is a great opportunity for Thai startups to scale and test their solutions through the Grab ecosystem, said Tarin.

“By piloting these innovative solutions in our comprehensive and interconnected ecosystem of everyday services ranging from transportation, food delivery, express delivery and financial services, we believe that this will not only allow startups to grow their businesses, but also benefit users and micro-entrepreneurs alike,” he said.

According to the report, the web remained one of the major sources of cyberthreats in the country. The global cybersecurity company detected 30,203,943 separate internet-borne infections in Thailand.

Overall, 31.8 per cent of Thai users were attacked by web-borne threats last year, according to the report based on data from Kaspersky Security Network (KSN). This is a significant increase over 2017, when the lab’s products detected 12,696,011 threats with 29 per cent of users attacked.

According to Suguru Ishimaru, security researcher at Kaspersky Lab Japan, the Thai increase follows a global trend showing an overall growth of detected malicious installation packages, new mobile banking trojans, and new mobile banking trojans.

Several Southeast Asian countries also made it to the world’s top 10 nations with the highest percentage of users attacked by online threats. Banking trojans such as DanaBot, which was first detected in Q2 2918, continue to develop rapidly.

“Currently Thailand is 73rd worldwide in terms of the dangers we have detected which are associated with web surfing,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky Lab.

“While we can easily say that Thailand is safer compared with its neighbours in the region, we still highly urge internet users in the country to put their guards up against these costly and damaging online threats,” he said.

“The more than 30 million online infections blocked last year proved that Thailand is still within the radar of cybercriminals. Beef up your defenses and improve your online habits. Do not be a willing prey.”