WITH the goal of halving the fraud rate by 2025, Visa aims to lead a new phase of payment security by collaborating with stakeholders in the payment ecosystem and continuing efforts to protect “deep value”, enhance data collection and empower consumers.

The development of digital payments has spawned a proliferation of data that attracts an increasing number of cybercriminals. According to Juniper Research, fraud is projected to cost retailers worldwide US$130 billion (Bt4 trillion) over the next five years.

Chris Clark, the regional president for Asia Pacific at Visa, said that innovation, data and technology will power the next generation of fraud management solutions.

“We are on the cusp of the fourth payment revolution,” said Clark.

Visa’s three-fold security strategy is to empower the consumer; protect, harness and devalue data by investing in intelligence and technology; and secure the future of payment.

“Our vision is to see a significant reduction in the fraud rate by 2025,” said Clark.

The core components of the payments ecosystem are data, people and infrastructure, he noted.

The digital era has led to an astonishing proliferation of data and data endpoints for criminals to exploit. The most challenging attacks exploit human vulnerabilities rather than technological ones.

The payment infrastructure is rapidly expanding, giving rise to an increasingly sophisticated criminal infrastructure.

Visa has claimed that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) within Visa Advanced Authorisation (VAA)

has helped financial institutions prevent an estimate $25 billion (Bt771 billion) in annual fraud, and made the global payment ecosystem

safer for both retailers and consumers.

When data analytics is used with authentication methods like biometrics to verify the cardholder, payment security is further enhanced.

Last year, Visa processed more than 127 billion transactions between merchants and financial institutions on VisaNet and employed AI to analyse 100 per cent of the transactions, each in about one millisecond.

Financial institutions can therefore approve legitimate purchases while quickly identifying and preventing fraudulent transactions.

VAA is a layer of fraud prevention that can help drive down risk and fraud for financial institutions and retailers, while helping to reduce friction due to false declines for account holders, said Clark. More than 8,000 financial institutions in 129 countries use VAA.

Asia Pacific generates $18 trillion (Bt555 trillion) in payment volume, about 23 per cent of Visa’s global business. However, huge cash opportunities of 55 per cent or around $6.1 trillion remain in the region, given that electronic payments make up about 45 per cent of transactions.

Meanwhile, digital payments continue to grow across Asia Pacific as consumers become more active users of e-commerce and rapidly adopt cashless methods of transactions.

Joe Cunningham, head of risk in Asia Pacific for Visa, said almost every government in Asia Pacific is focused on driving a digitalisation agenda, reducing the reliance on cash and cheques.

This has created huge opportunities for digital payment innovations. The payment industry generates significant amount of data, some of which is sensitive and attractive to criminal organisations.

Asia Pacific’s e-commerce sales are expected to reach $3.5 trillion in 2021, further cementing the region as the biggest market in the world for online shopping. Technologies like tokenisation will help to ensure no token details are transmitted during an online transition, said Cunningham.

Visa’s token service option replaces sensitive account information, such as the 16-digit account number, with a unique digital identifier called a token.

This token allows payments to be processed without exposing actual account details that could potentially be compromised.

“We envisage a future from passwords, where consumers benefit from the advanced technology to authenticate their identity. A future with less fraud and less friction,” said Cunningham.

However, Clark added, we are now in the fourth revolution in payment, in which payment is driven by emerging technologies including quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and biometrics.

Some of these have already been implemented in public transportation, media, telecommunication, retail, healthcare, banking and payment. These innovative payment methods also led to the evolution of fraud in the fourth evolution as well.

In the lingo of security experts, the fourth evolution of fraud is experiencing emerging threat vectors.

Southeast Asia offers the largest opportunity for cash payment in Asia Pacific. E-payment will be available through many forms including plastic cards, but also watches, smartphones and IoT devices.

According to Gartner consultancy, by 2021 the number of connected devices worldwide will be roughly 25 billion, causing issuers and retailers to respond to consumer demand for greater convenience through access and use of payment account information across multiple channels and devices.

“Visa is helping to safeguard the payment ecosystem through a multilayered approach to payment data safety, with solutions and services based on global security standards, protecting and devaluing sensitive data,” said Clark.

Shivakumar Sriraman, Visa’s chief risk officer for Southeast Asia, said that hyper-connectivity is creating new ways to pay.

The use of 21 billion connected devices by 2020 potentially creates a $600 billion cybercrime business, with the average data breach costing $1.2 million, according to Kaspersky Lab.

This is also known as the chaining attack landscape.

Visa’s security strategy is to empower consumers, banks and merchants; to invest in intelligent ecosystem assets; to establish a governance process; and to promote a strategic vision for security to be a catalyst for growth, enabling responsible innovation and enhanced convenience, said Sriraman.

He added that Visa had already launched its Asia Pacific Security Roadmap in many countries, including Thailand.

The security roadmap is a set of market-specific initiatives and goals backed by Visa rules, mandates and incentives. It is also collaboratively agreed with clients and regulatory bodies so as to drive improvements in the security of the industry.

“According to our security roadmap, we are now on track with tokenisation and are moving forward to the card-on-file tokenisation by 2022,” said Sriraman.

Thailand actively engaged

Thailand is among the countries mostly actively engaged in digital payment, led by e-commerce and transit.

Shirley Yu, Visa’s group general manager for Greater China, said that China is No 2 in the world for consumers who made a purchase with their phones over the past month, twice the penetration level of the United States. Thailand is No 1 in the world for consumers who made a purchase through their phones.

Meanwhile, most Thais were using contactless payment for transit.

According to the latest Consumer Payment Attitude Study by Visa, 42 per cent of Thai consumers were carrying less cash than in the previous two years. This represents a huge increase compared to the 26 per cent recorded in the previous study. It demonstrates a willingness to go digital, with 73 per cent of Thai respondents citing convenience as the top reasons they increased their cashless payments, especially when using cashless payment for transit.

New trends and digital payment solutions are inline with the Thailand National e-Payment agenda, pushing the Kingdom a step closer to a cashless economy, including through transit solutions, e-commerce solutions, digital solutions, tokens and mobile payments.

Visa has a transit programme that is dedicated to the expansion and acceleration of the use of debit, credit and prepaid accounts for mass transit fees.

Robert Walls, Visa’s head of hub consumer products & digital solutions in Asia Pacific, said the company over the past year helped to launch contactless transit solutions in 20 cities across 12 countries, with more than 150 projects currently underway.

“If people start using a contactless card to pay, it would support the wider adoption of contactless payments and set the foundation for future ways to pay. Getting around by public transpiration is something a lot of people do every day,” said Walls.

Major cities have enabled open-loop payment cards for public transport including London, Sydney, New York and Singapore. The project with Singapore was one of Visa’s largest implementations for contactless acceptance for transit, with 30,000 acceptance points.

The first step to enabling the use of credit and debit cards at the turnstile is to enable open-loop payment, Walls added.

The open-loop payment in transit refers to the acceptance of payment methods that are not proprietary to the transportation network in question. In Bangkok, the Rabbit card is an example of a “closed-loop” payment system because it can only be used for travel on the BTS Skytrain.

These payment methods often require a customer to convert their money to transit-only funds stored in the card, which is then used to travel. For example, if a tourist comes to Thailand and wants to travel on the BTS, he or she will need to buy a transit fare card to board the train. This requires waiting in line to buy a card at the ticketing machine and having the necessary cash on hand to pay the fare. The customer also needs to carry the additional card with them on the ride.

Visa’s role in transit is about providing the right standards and solutions to make it easier for transit operators to accept contactless at their fare gates, and importantly, it is to fully transform the passenger experience.

“We have dedicated speci

The units were sold primarily between September 2015 and February 2017 and can be identified by their product serial number.

The recall does not affect any other models.

Apple said that, because customer safety is a top priority, it is asking customers to stop using affected 15-inch MacBook Pro units. Customers should visit the Apple website for details on product eligibility and how to have a battery replaced for free.

“To confirm which model you have, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of your screen. If you have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), enter your computer’s serial number on the programme page to see if it is eligible for a battery replacement,” said the company.

Apple revolutionised personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple says it leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV.

Apple’s four software platforms – iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS – provide experiences across all Apple devices and let people use services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. “Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it,” the company said.

The NBTC has already joined with Chulalongkorn University to set up a 5G wireless broadband technology testing centre at that university.

These moves are part of the |regulator’s continued preparations to get 5G off the ground next |year.

Among the use-case testing that Khon Kaen University will focus on is smart agriculture, while Prince of Songkla University will concentrate of long-distance telehealth and smart security.

Chiang Mai University will focus on telemedicine, smart city, virtual reality and robotics.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said that each of the campuses, including Chulalongkorn University, were expected to begin testing in the next few months.

The regulator will grant a budget of around Bt56 million to Chulalongkorn University to fund its testing centre, and is expected to match that grant for each of the other three campuses.

The three major telecom operators are in support of the testing at all the universities.

The NBTC on Wednesday allocated a 700MHz licence to each of Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communication (DTAC), and True Corp to provide the 5G service. The licence becomes valid starting in October 2020.

The NBTC has already joined with Chulalongkorn University to set up a 5G wireless broadband technology testing centre at the university.

These moves are part of the regulator’s continued preparations for 5G to get off the ground next year.

Khon Kaen University will focus on smart agriculture and Prince of Songkla University will study long-distance telehealth and smart security.

Chiang Mai University will concentrate on telemedicine, smart cities, virtual reality and robotics.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith said that all these campuses, including Chulalongkorn University, were expected to start the testing in the next few months.

Facebook is moving into its next chapter as it rearranges the platform’s furniture and brings in  new tech to add to the social fun and respond to the shifting behaviour of its users.

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook Inc, said there have been rapid shifts in the behaviour of its users. The current shift has people moving from mainly participating in the News Feed and through public posts to now telling their stories.

People want to share in different ways, she said at Facebook’s International Press Day last Wednesday. They want to share in one way and then in another and yet another.

“The other thing we are very focused on, because it meets with our vision, which we have changed to focus on community, is the power of groups,” said Sandberg.

She said staff are seeing more and more activity taking place in Facebook Groups, which users can set up to be public, private, secret or open. The Groups option is designed to bring people together.

Meanwhile, for safety and security, Sandberg said, the company is working hard to make sure it preserves the good that happens in the community, but also to make sure it prevents the harm.

“With a community of 2.7 billion people, we are making massive investments in safety and security. We are working very closely with governments around the world to do things like protect elections. We are working really hard with our internal teams, product teams to find bad actors and take them down,” said Sandberg.

She said the company does not want people to encounter fake news on Facebook and so is taking action around the world. It is referring Facebook articles to third-party fact-checkers, who can then decrease the post’s distribution through News Feed as well as present related facts. Facebook is a free-expression platform, she said, and is committed to the idea that if one person says something that is false, the only way to fight it is with good information.

“We do believe there are situations where if something is fake, and it could lead to real-world violence, we will take it down. We do not want sales news to go viral. [So] we take away 80 per cent of the distribution and allow related articles – which are the other side of the story – so that debate can be vigorous,” said Sandberg.

Regarding its video entertainment content, the company is also planning to invest more. Their idea anchoring Facebook Watch is that the content consumed by most people on Facebook is pretty short form, and that most people discover video content through their friends, family, and the things that they connect to, like News Feed. However, people were increasingly doing longer-form things on their phones, and were increasingly discovering content in different ways than through recommendations.

“We did not really have a place for that. The idea was to create its own specification for longer-form content. Some [content] we pay for, but most of it … anyone can submit and we will help them monetise through ads,” she said.

“It is doing nicely. We had big hits like Red Table Talk and Tom Brady. We also had user-generated stuff that went well. We do expect to continue making investments here and showing people more long-form video, said Sandberg.

The company has done a lot of work on psychological well-being, she said. This is something that will continue to evolve and change, and is done with researchers. One finding was that when people are connecting with real friends and family and engaging with content, it is pretty psychologically healthy for them. It is not addictive in a bad way, but rather positive because people feel less alone, less isolated and more connected. However, when people are passively observing things that can be psychologically more negative.

She points as an example to the company’s large shift on News Feed at the beginning of 2018, which gave preference to posts from friends and family, for example.

“We are committed to psychological well-being and we will continue to do that research, and will continue to make sure that the things Facebook is showing you are the things that will be good, and not be addictive in any negative way, but will give people a positive psychological benefit,” said Sandberg.

She claimed that those people who have the most connections to others on Facebook and online have stronger real-world relationships. It is the people who are isolated and do not have those relationships who tend not to be online.

“We know who you are connecting to and what you are engaging with. For the average person, for every story we show [them] in News Feed we have a dozen more that we could show [them]. Our algorithms are showing people more of the things they are engaging with. We are connecting billions of people. I am not saying this to minimise [the down side] at all. The challenge is big, but it is a challenge that comes with every new technology,” said Sandberg.

However, as an example of what they are capable of to improve the social good, the platform just rolled out a blood donation feature in the Unites States, after previously doing so in India, Pakistan, Brazil and Bangladesh. People in those countries can sign up to be a blood donor on Facebook by going to the “Blood Donations” tab in the About section of their profile. As well, blood donation centres needing donors can request donations and send notifications to those nearby who have signed up.

Facebook Groups

Fidji Simo, head of Facebook App, said that people are coming to the platform for more and more different kinds of things as they find it can meet an increasing range of needs. This is part of the vision for the app leading into the next year.

The Facebook App is playing a very big part in making sure it is giving people a method to share in all the ways that they want to, from the more public ways to very private ways using one-on-one messaging. Groups are at the heart of that.

One of the things on which the company has been particularly investing a lot is groups. That is because in a privacy-focused future, it is important to understand that people want to share in a range of ways.

“We are seeing a lot of people wanting to engage and share things in groups that they may not even want to share with friends and family, so that is why it is critical for us. A couple of weeks ago we announced a big redesign of the Facebook App that puts groups at the centre,” said Simo.

In addition to offering a fresh design that is both faster and allows users to navigate the app in a more enjoyable way, Groups also provides a way for users to more easily access their communities.  Following the revamp, the number of people joining groups and becoming part of meaningful communities is increasing as was expected, she said.

There is always a lot of competition in News Feed, making it harder to get people’s attention. People do not always fully realise the immense volume of content on the platform, and the volume increase continues as ever-more public content is published.

The latest change to groups allows people to connect there to the groups most relevant to them and to consume the content whenever they desire a community experience.

However, group content is taking over the News Feed. Still, News Feed remains in line with its historical role and the latest changes do not specifically affect referral traffic.

There is a way for publishers to participate in groups, and many publishers are creating communities around their content, there, she said.

“Leverage groups to let people talk to each other about the communities you are creating,” Simo advises, “instead of talking at them, which is more what a page on Facebook is about.”

Katherine Woo, director of product management for Facebook Groups, noted that 1.4 billion people now use groups monthly, over 400 million people say they belong to a group they find meaningful. Some groups are more informational, some are light-hearted, while others offer emotional support.

“We are making some changes to put groups at the centre of the Facebook experience, things like a redesigned Groups tab where we bring together all of your groups content in one place, [along with] new and improved discovery tools to make it easier for you to find groups and communities that will interest you. As well, there are special features for certain types of communities, like health and gaming communities,” said Woo.

Facebook Watch

Watch is the video destination on Facebook, said Paresh Rajwat, the product director and head at Facebook.

Watch is much more than just a library of great videos so that people can follow video creators they care about, start conversations about videos with friends and join communities of fans who share their interests, he said.

Watch was launched in the US two years ago and went international to nearly every country some 10 months ago. It is fast-growing, with around grow 720 million people watching monthly, and 140 million people daily now spending at least a minute on Watch. Daily visitors spend an average 26 minutes on the platform. “Our mission is to create a shared experience and a feeling of belonging by using video. We are making it easier to find and join Groups based on the videos users watch, and testing new sections in Watch to help them enjoy videos with friends,” said Rajwat.

It aims to keep content a personalised experience for everyone on Facebook. It has also encouraged formation of an ecosystem of publishers and content creators, who in turn are able to make money on their creations through the Ad Breaks programme. Ad Breaks recently expanded to Canada and added five new languages (Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, Punjabi and Swedish), after first reaching 40 countries last December.

Rajwat sees Ad Breaks as great way for publishers to monetise cont

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From shared lives and experiences to buying and selling

Facebook Stories

The way people share and connect has changed. Facebook Stories is a way to share everyday stories in the moment. More than 500 million people use stories across Facebook and Instagram every single day.

Some of the latest features from stories include events in stories, group stories and birthday stories.

Facebook Dating

There are more than 200 million people who have listed themselves as single in their relationship status on Facebook. Many of them already use Facebook to start meaningful relationships.

Currently, this service is available in 19 countries and will be in the US later this year. Some of the latest features from Facebook Dating include Secret Crush and Share Live Location.

Facebook Gaming 

Gaming powers the largest and most engaged communities on Facebook, with more than 700 million people playing games, watching gaming videos or engaging in gaming groups each month. Its latest product includes a dedicated Facebook Gaming tab on the home navigation bar of Facebook to make it easy for people to find and connect around their favourite games, streamers, groups and more.

Memorialisation

One of Facebook’s core missions, the company says,  is to give people the power to build community and it has designed Memorialisation with this in mind.

Over 30 million people view memorialised profiles every month to post stories, commemorate milestones and remember those who have passed away. Recently, it announced updates to make this experience even more supportive for those in need.

Facebook controls

Controls have always been fundamental to what Facebook builds, whether it is for News Feed, ads or privacy settings.

These controls include ones to personalise their experience and the content they see from friends and family, as well as controls they have over your information, both in terms of the ads that surface and their privacy settings.

Marketplace

Marketplace is a place on Facebook to browse, buy, and sell items — anything from furniture to cars and household items. People can start selling on Facebook Marketplace in three easy steps: snap a few photos of the item, write a brief description and name the price.

Well-being

Facebook has invested in research over the years to get a better understanding of the net impact of Facebook on well-being. Facebook is a platform where people fulfil important needs like belonging, support, accomplishment, and pursuing interests – powered by access to social connections.

Content policy

Facebook’s community standards cover a wide range of policy areas to catch all kinds of harmful content – everything from bullying and harassment to hate speech, spam and impersonation.  The content review process is very complex, and therefore one that Facebook says it takes very seriously. The team reviews content 24/7 in almost every language widely used in the world.

The company said in a press release on Friday that the partnership aims to lay a solid foundation of Mechatronics, a multidisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the engineering of both electrical and mechanical systems. It also includes a combination of robotics, electronics, computer and telecommunications, for higher vocational students to strengthen their theoretical and practical knowledge to international standards.

Uwe Quaas, managing director of BMW Group Manufacturing Thailand, said: “We are delighted to continue this BMW Dual Excellence Program with Chitralada Technology Institute as it resonates well with our joint commitment to strengthen the potential of higher vocational students in Mechatronics.

“The program also provides the students with hands-on experience at Plant Rayong and by the end of this year, we will have 6 graduates from the institute starting their careers with the plant. This is another important milestone of the program and potentially increases our local competitiveness in the global automotive arena.”

Chitralada Vocational School, Chitralada Technology Institute offers vocational education and higher vocational education in various fields including electrical power, electronics, mechanical, automotive, mechatronics and embedded technology programs.

The school aims to develop students’ skills and capabilities in the related industrial fields while also emphasising ethics and morality in their professions as a basis for sustainable career development.

As the first and only vendor so far to deliver the 5G network to the 5G Testbed in the Eastern Economic Corridor, Huawei is providing a platform that will be used for end-to-end tests and trials of applications in a real-world setting.

It will also be a venue to research and develop new services and products using new ICT technology to serve industry development.

The collaboration aims to test and bring the 5G experience to millions of consumers in all vertical industries, including education, automotive, manufacturing and industry, and health, who will benefit greatly from next-generation technologies.

There are many advantages to 5G, including a very powerful wireless networking technology that is suitable for all industrial applications and innovations, the company said on Tuesday.

The first 5G presentation will demonstrate use cases on Multi-UHD Video Live and 360 Wireless VR.

This will give a glimpse into how 5G will power the UHD video industry, based on high bandwidth, low latency and a highly reliable network, enabling the new connectivity, new architecture and new media of the future, Huawei said, adding that other partners would also be welcome to test their applications on its 5G platform.

“The 5G Testbed project in Kasetsart University, Sri Racha campus, is in line with the government’s policy to accelerate Thailand’s digital-economy transformation,” said Deng Feng, deputy managing director of Huawei Thailand.

“This 5G Testbed will incite all industries to take their development to the next level. We look forward to collaborating with other vendors and various partners in an open and concerted manner to achieve 5G service innovation for Thailand and incubate a healthy 5G ecosystem.

“Together, we can all cooperate to bring the best 5G network to Thailand in order to build a solid foundation, help the transition to 5G technology and transform the industry, so we can connect people for a better quality of life.”

The complete core platform for the 5G network includes the 5G base station, access network, use-case products, and other 5G-related equipment to be used at the Testbed site.

Huawei has invested a total of US$5 million (Bt156 million) for the 5G Testbed in Sri Racha.

With the dream to see Thailand emerge as a leading start-up country in Asia, entrepreneur Oranuch Lerdsuwankij, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Techsauce Media, has embarked on this challenge by launching the Techsauce Global Summit.

Upon graduating in telecommunications engineering from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang almost 20 years ago, Oranuch, now 40, began her working life as an employee to earn enough to support her family which had been bankrupted when she was a first-year student at KMITL.

Student Oranuch, known as Mimee, was told by her father that he had no property to give her, other than to ensure she had an education so that she might be able to build a home for herself. Her first dream after graduating was to buy a house for her family and support her younger sister’s studies.

Her first job was in DTAC’s product development team. Her role, which lasted three years, involved communication between the marketing and engineering teams. Though only 22, and needing to communicate technical messages to the senior marketing team, she heeded the advice that a smart person is one who can explain difficult things in an easy way.

Oranuch then moved to TA Orange to take on similar work, but also getting involved in OPEX/CAPEX so that she could practice evaluating operational costs – a skill that she now says helped her a lot when she began her own business.

After five years, she left to work for a technology vending company as a solutions manager for a short while, before returning to work for True Corporation for another three years. She was a part of the launch of 3G and BlackBerry in Thailand at that time and expanded her domain to cover more marketing work.

“I was lucky to be given a chance in which all of my past opportunities and experiences were connected and I could at that moment become who I am,” said Oranuch.

While working at True Corp, she started her media business journey by joining with friends to establish Thumbsup, a news website that provided online content, initially about digital marketing. She loved writing a blog and sharing her knowledge with others.

Her turning point came when she began reading startup stories and found that Thai start-ups were not widely recognised in Southeast Asia. She created a new area on Thumbsup to publish and promote start-ups.

“Startups were very new in Thailand at that time, around 2010 and 2011,” recalled Oranuch.

It helped her to discover herself and to realise that her interest was not in digital marketing but rather about start-ups. It was the important dot that connected her to Techsauce. She loved start-ups because of her love for the innovation aspect of businesses in which they can solve social and other problems for people. To achieve that requires creativity and a deep understanding of customers. She devoted a lot of time to learn more about start-ups around the world.

At this time, Oranuch was partnered with Computerology, and that exposed her to a lot about start-ups, such as the concepts of “building from zero” and “pain points”. She blended her knowledge from working at corporates with her understanding of start-ups.

“I am not a journalist. But I am in between the two sides – startups and corporates. I realised that’s how we can help them both,” said Oranuch.

Around this time, she quit her employee life to fully become an entrepreneur. She resolved to do anything she could to get things done immediately without getting approval from the others, and learned that she enjoyed to have things “in my control”.

In 2014, she separated the startup content from Thumbsup and established Techsauce Media after having since 2012 worked to build a start-up community under Thumbsup. Her first startup community event was called “Start It Up”.

Techsauce Media set out to be a content generator that developed quality informative content for startups and corporates. She said good content does not need to be in a media format; it can be presented in an event format such as the Techsauce Global Summit in which content is created to get people to learn more about start-ups and corporate innovations at an event and conference.

Moreover, “good content” in her meaning turned to be an accelerator programme that her company worked on for the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa). It also included an annual start-up economy report.

After launching the “Start It Up” local startup event in 2015, she took on the challenge of turning it into a global start-up event under the name “Techsauce Global Summit” starting in 2016.

“It needed to bet, to choose to go big – or to go home,” said Oranuch.

She decided to take on that scaling risk, and expanded it by 10 times in terms of the number of start-ups, investors, partners, speakers and attendees. The move was aimed to place a pin-point on Thailand’s presence on the world’s global start-up map. In that first year, many sponsors did not believe in her dream but she refused to be discouraged.

“I did not have 10 times the confidence. I just realised that I had to get it done, and if it failed that was still better than doing nothing,” said Oranuch.

In the last five years, Techsauce Media has played the role of a platform that helps Thai start-ups to meet investors and partners at the event. It serves as a connecting runway for Thai startups to move forward, and also as the bridge between overseas investors, start-ups, and partners on one side and Thai startups on the other.

In her entrepreneurial life, Oranuch has every day worked hard, 10 times the hard work of being an employee. Yet she insists that she is not tired because she very much enjoys her work.

The success of Techsauce is the success of her team, she said. Her success is to do what she loves. However, she remains unsatisfied over the accomplishments of Techsauce Media, and even though the branding of Techsauce Global Summit has been acknowledged among those in the global start-up community, Oranuch said there is room for improvement. The summit is only half way to success, she said.

And yet, her confidence has strengthened as Techsauce Global Summit grew to be the biggest and most qualified start-up event in Southeast Asia, based on evaluations from those who participated in this paid event. Charging for the event is intended to screen people, so those who attend are genuinely there in search of business matching and partnerships. She said there were more than 500 deals pursued at the event.

In 2018, Techsauce Global Summit has attendance of around 10,000 people. Her next challenging chapter is to drive attendance at Techsauce Global Summit 2019 to about 20,000 people, and establish it as the largest start-up event in Asia region.

“I set the goal so high to challenge myself and our team,” she explained.

This year’s theme for Techsauce Global Summit is “technology for life”, as technology creates the tools for reaching a better life. People do not need to be afraid of the coming of artificial intelligence, she said, but can take advantage of new kinds of technology. The event will educate people about this, she said, adding that people need to reskill and upskill. Technology is engaged with all people, no matter who they are and how old they are.

“This event is not for start-ups and corporates – it is for everyone as an individual person. We adjust content to align with the mass of people,” said Oranuch.

In her management role, she sees communication and trust as most important. She always manages transparently in order to ensure good communication with her staff, who are mostly generations Y and Z. She said it is important to understand their life values as well as to listen to and respect them.

“I am not born to be an entrepreneur. I am a content creator who turned to business. It is like other start-ups that find they need to scale their business, while they also need to have good coaching for the employees,” she said. Being female is a factor that has no effect on her working life or her business, she said.

“We each need to find our goal for life; my most important value is to be grateful to my family and to others.”