Bangkok--16 Jul--PTT
Mr. Chansin Treenuchagron, Chief Technology and Engineering Officer, PTT Public Company Limited and Chairman of the Board, PTT Digital Solutions Co., Ltd., presided over the opening ceremony of 'D-NEXT: Demo Day 2018' under 'D-NEXT by PTT Digital x RISE', accelerator program conducted by PTT Digital Solutions Co., Ltd. (PTT Digital) and RISE, a regional corporate innovation accelerator. The event is organized to unveil prototypes of globally renowned startup ideas evolved by 15 startup teams selected to join the bootcamp activity launched to promote startup business potential and development throughout a period of three months. All 15 startup teams are encouraged to present their developed prototypes to more than 300 participants including PTT executives, Corporate Ventures, and leading startup experts. In addition, high-potential startup team will be offered a great opportunity to work with PTT Group by enhancing technology for New S-Curve business development with a quantum leap in business growth to drive digital economy in Thailand and ASEAN countries. The winning team is BBP, the energy tech startup from Singapore.
Mr. Chansin Treenuchagron, Chief Technology and Engineering Officer, PTT Public Company Limited and Chairman of the Board, PTT Digital Solutions Co., Ltd., said "PTT Group aims to adopt digital technology into its business operations for greater business efficiency, while being able to cope with changes of large-sized organizations in the digital era, where the competitiveness of advanced technology and new innovation will ensure our invincible success. D-NEXT by PTT Digital x RISE project has successfully been launched by the collaboration between PTT Group and RISE for over six months, inviting 300 startup teams from 22 nations worldwide. However, only 15 teams have been selected to match up with PTT Group's six business functions, consisting of energy and utility management, operation and maintenance, health and environment, sales and marketing, finance, and other relevant businesses, for instance, human resource. All 15 startup teams will be part of the enhancement of digital technology-inspired products evolved to solve PTT Group's business pain points efficiently. Outstanding startup teams will be offered an opportunity to work with PTT Digital to equally achieve strong growth at the international level. This event intends to showcase prototypes of startup ideas developed to meet PTT Group's requirements for the first time. It also helps promote their enhanced potential and readiness in developing their startup businesses together with PTT Group prompting for the New S-Curve of business."
Mrs. Arawadee Photisaro, Managing Director of PTT Digital Solutions Co., Ltd. revealed that "During 12 weeks in the bootcamp, all 15 startup teams were instructed by mentors which are technological and business experts from PTT Group and RISE's affiliates. Their products and services are advised to better serve the needs of PTT Group businesses and their applications are tested by related business units for further development. The showcase of 15 Startup teams at D-NEXT: Demo Day 2018 creates the opportunity to be a part of the Digital Transformation Project of PTT Group. The Startup teams will be offered a chance to expand their investment in new businesses of PTT Digital and PTT Group in the future. PTT Digital believes that this project will be another significant step for PTT group that we will learn startup's culture as well as their working concept with resourceful entrepreneurs, who are courageous to think / do new things and ready to deal with changes at all time. Moreover, it also promotes digital economy for the development of startup potentiality along with the enhancement of corporate competitiveness among large organizations.
As for Ms. Ying Chittipatanakulchai, Co-founder, RISE, foreseen that, in order to strive for Thailand to Digital Era and becoming a leader, the large organizations also play an important role to form New-S Curve. This agenda can be started by promoting and supporting startups which have concepts and services that differ from those offered by the organizations. Startups can run the operation rapidly and they can work as partnerships that complement the expertise of large organizations. Currently, the Digital Economics are expected to be able to grow up to 50 billion US dollars in value. Whereby, ASEAN can be considered as gainer with third largest market in the world, combining of population of over 620 million people, after China and India. D-NEXT: Demo Day 2018 is considered as a great start where the startups in ASEAN and other countries around the world, including investors, and PTT executives will create a network to collaborate to expand businesses with digital technologies."
Regarding the competition result, the winning team who received D-NEXT Award is 'BBP' (Barghest Building Performance), the energy tech startup from Singapore, who presented the monitoring tools for building climate control system with real-time optimized intelligent algorithm that automatically increase or decrease temperature in buildings. This helps reduce energy consumption by up to 40%, and also reduce carbon dioxide emission. BBP will be taking a portion of achieved savings as payment. For Fan Favorite Award voted by the audiences goes to 'UpUp App', the HR tech startup from Vietnam, who purposed the application that use gamification concept to build employee engagement program by accumulating points and rewards redemption in accordance with objectives-key result performance setting. This helps increase work motivation, accelerate performance measuring process, and boost up employee engagement.