Sagri, the Japanese startup behind a satellite-based agricultural analytics platform under the same name, announced on Monday that it has agreed to conduct a proof-of-concept（PoC） project with Thailand’s largest conglomerate CP Group (Chalung Pokaphan Group). The startup will conduct tests of satellite data-based soil analysis with CP Group’s BKP (Bangkok Produce Merchandising). The tests will be conducted on corn farmland in the northeastern part of Thailand to confirm that Sagri’s soil analysis method can be performed more quickly and inexpensively than conventional ways. In the future, based on the the analysis result, the startup envisions a project to generate carbon credit derived from farmland by optimizing fertilizer application. This partnership was revealed during the 5th batch Demo Day of Rock Thailand, an open innovation-focused pitch event run by the Embassy of Japan in Thailand and CP Group since 2019. The event is part of the
Image credit: Sagri
Sagri, the Japanese startup behind a satellite-based agricultural analytics platform under the same name, announced on Monday that it has agreed to conduct a proof-of-concept（PoC） project with Thailand’s largest conglomerate CP Group (Chalung Pokaphan Group). The startup will conduct tests of satellite data-based soil analysis with CP Group’s BKP (Bangkok Produce Merchandising).
The tests will be conducted on corn farmland in the northeastern part of Thailand to confirm that Sagri’s soil analysis method can be performed more quickly and inexpensively than conventional ways. In the future, based on the the analysis result, the startup envisions a project to generate carbon credit derived from farmland by optimizing fertilizer application.
This partnership was revealed during the 5th batch Demo Day of Rock Thailand, an open innovation-focused pitch event run by the Embassy of Japan in Thailand and CP Group since 2019. The event is part of the 2nd batch of Rock Thailand in 2019. Starting with this opportunity, Sagri has begun researching its entry into the Thai market, established a Singapore subsidiary in January, and has been in ongoing discussions with CP Group.
Following securing 100 million yen ($1.4 million US in the exchange rate at the time) in a seed round in June of 2021, Sagri formed a capital and business alliance with Softbank’s SB Technology in 2022, and was subsequently selected for the 4th batch of the accelerator program run by Japan Agricultural Co-operatives for business collaboration.
See the original story in Japanese. On Monday at True Digital Park in Bangkok, the Japanese Embassy in Thailand together with the CP Group (Charoen Pokphand Group) held a Demo Day of the second batch of Rock Thailand, a matchmaking event aiming to help Japanese startup and Thai conglomerates to work together. The event is part of the Open Innovation Columbus (OIC) initiative, which promotes strategic alliances between Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates. The majority of Thai conglomerates do not reap the benefits of a digital economy. In Japan, large companies are moving to start digital transformation (DX) by collaborating with startups (it’s so called ‘open innovation’), while in Thailand, due to the nature of the verticals that local startups specialize in, DX through open innovation will likely still take time. In response to this, OIC selected a team of 10 Japanese startups that lead verticals likely to be useful for DX (AI, robotics, IoT, logistics), and that are particularly interested in advancing into Southeast Asia, including Thailand, and invited them to Bangkok. This is an attempt at targeting cross-border open innovation and focuses on using the power of Japanese startups to foster DX for Thai conglomerates. Since top executives…
On Monday at True Digital Park in Bangkok, the Japanese Embassy in Thailand together with the CP Group (Charoen Pokphand Group) held a Demo Day of the second batch of Rock Thailand, a matchmaking event aiming to help Japanese startup and Thai conglomerates to work together. The event is part of the Open Innovation Columbus (OIC) initiative, which promotes strategic alliances between Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates.
The majority of Thai conglomerates do not reap the
benefits of a digital economy. In Japan, large companies are moving to
start digital transformation (DX) by collaborating with startups (it’s
so called ‘open innovation’), while in Thailand, due to the nature of
the verticals that local startups specialize in, DX through open
innovation will likely still take time.
In response to this, OIC selected a team of 10 Japanese startups that lead verticals likely to be useful for DX (AI, robotics, IoT, logistics), and that are particularly interested in advancing into Southeast Asia, including Thailand, and invited them to Bangkok. This is an attempt at targeting cross-border open innovation and focuses on using the power of Japanese startups to foster DX for Thai conglomerates. Since top executives from local conglomerates including CP group listen to startup pitches, their effort is more likely to lead to PoC (proof of concept) and other collaborative work because of top-down decision making.
From left: Thanasorn Jaidee (President, True Digital Park), Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin (CEO, Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa), Thailand), Soopakij Chearavanont (Chairman, CP Group), Kobsak Pootrakool (Deputy Secretary-General for political affairs to Thai Prime Minister), Shiro Sadoshima (Japaese Ambassador to Thailand), John Jiang (Chief Digital Officer, CP Group) Image credit: Masaru Ikeda
As a result of the initiative’s previous batch, our readers may recall that there were an announcement regarding the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on PoCs towards collaboration between Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates:
Ground (autonomous collaborative robot for the logistics industry) – WHA (logistics facility giant in Thailand)
Skydisc (AI and IoT) – TTCL (Thiland’s engineering giant)
Toppan Printing – DRVR (fleet analytics)
Flare (ad-wrapping service for car owners and telematics) – Toyota Tsusho Thailand
Leave a Nest – Innospace (Thailand’s startup accelerator backed by the government and private sectors)
Since Shiro Sadoshima were finishing his term as the Japanese ambassador to Thailand, attending the Demo Day was the last opportunity for him to be involved in a series of the OIC activities. In the event, Kobsak Pootrakool, Deputy Secretary-General to the Thai Prime Minister for Political Affairs, made a keynote speech and thanked Sadoshima for his great work for many years. Because of high reputation from the Thai Government and local conglomerates, Roch Thailand and other OIC activities are expected to be taken over and followed up by the next ambassador.
The founders of participating 10 startups from Japan made a pitch to Soopakij Cheravanont, chairman of CP Group, and other 60 representatives from his group companies in addition to 80 people from other local conglomerates. Discussions between potential partners with Japanese startups have just begun after the pitch, so please stay tuned to their future progress and eventually public announcement as their previous batch grads recently did. For now, let’s have a quick look down on how the participating startups are working to tackle.
Founded back in 2016, Paronym has developed the TIG interactive video solution that allows viewers to obtain necessary information by tapping an item in a video clip. Use cases include e-commerce sites selling interiors and fashion outfits, recipe sites (linking to foods and ingredients in the recipe), and online travel guides (linking to travel destinations). The platform offers tracking editing tool that allows content owners to associate objects in a clip with link destinations in addition to heat map tool showing them which part of the clip their viewers are tapping.
The company offers a different line-up for each of six different verticals
including movies splitting off into multiple case scenarios, magazines, digital signage, commerce, learning and live (performance). Due to its high interactivity, they claim that the platform can help e-commerce sites gain their conversion rate twice that of Instagram, three times that of YouTube. The company is seeking business partnership, series B investment, and sales partnership in Thailand.
Connected Robotics
Connected Robotics was founded back in 2014 by CEO Tetsuya Sawanobori who has been developing industrial robot controllers and won a robot contest organized by Japanese public broadcaster NHK when he was attending the university of Tokyo. Their portfolio products include OctoChef offering automated cooking of Octopus Dumplings, the Reita ice cream serving robot, Dish Washing System, hot snacks serving robot for convenience stores, and the Loraine breakfast cooking robot.
The company won the Startup Weekend Robotics back in 2017, and was also selected for Kirin Accelerator 2017 and IBM BlueHub 4th Batch. Their robot is not intended for sale but is provided as a service (Robot as a Service=RAAS) that allows store owners to use it by paying installation and monthly usage fees so that then can start using it as an alternative to clerks. Supporting various robot arms with its control software and computer vision-based positioning system, the system is very flexible in dealing with a variety of ingredients and cooking procedures.
IntegriCulture
IntegriCulture has developed cell farming technology for producing cultured meat. As a means of supplying animal protein, meat products derived from livestock has many issues from the viewpoint of sustainable society because of excessive consumption of water resources, deforestation, and emission of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, the technology for producing cultured meat is very expensive and still far from far from our daily consumption.
The company has succeeded in producing meat for human consumption by culturing actual cells. For example, it enables to produce chicken liver paste equivalents by putting muscle cells into culture solution (biocatalyst). In the actual animal body, internal organs secrete hormones to change cells to support every different function in the body but the company’s solution, called CulNet, made it possible virtually. The company is currently developing cultured foie gras, hoping to work with Thai companies to market artificial anti-aging serum based on the same culture technology.
A.L.I. Technologies has three business domains: drone, air mobility, and computing power sharing. in the air mobility business, the company unveiled the prototype of hoverbike for public road use back in March. In the machine computing power sharing using high-spec GPUs, our readers may recall that the company invested in Pegara, the startup behind a CPU cloud service for deep learning called GPU Eater, back in September this year.
The company’s drone can be also used for streamlining the regular semi-annual inspection of power plant facilities and eventually saving up to $9 million yen. Having formed a nationwide network of drone pilots who have received high-level training, the company is looking to increase demands of drones in periodical facility inspections, agriculture, and surveys in addition to those of hoverbikes in racing, entertainment, and mobility use.
LinkWiz
The working population, especially in the manufacturing industry, is shrinking not only in Japan but also in Thailand as the aging society advances. LinkWiz automates manufacturing and inspection processes of industrial products using robots, realizing labor savings and gaining efficiency. Their flagship products are the L-Qualify 3D weld bead inspection system and the L-Robot teaching tool that helps robots correct movements aligned with target work.
The company claims their technology has helped precision machinery and auto parts manufacturers like Yamaha, Mitutoyo, and Aisin Seiki cut down their production cost. LinkWiz hopes clients to use these robots “as sensors” and use them throughout the entire manufacturing process at the factory. In June, the company secured about $8.2 million from round INCJ, SMBC Venture Capital, Mitutoyo, Panasonic, Global Brain, Hamashin Lease, and other investors in a series B round.
TBM
TBM has developed a new limestone-based material called Limex, an alternative to paper, plastic, and vinyl. Making paper consumes a lot of wood and water, while producing plastic also consumes fossil fuels and releases greenhouse gases. As plastic pollution in the ocean has become a mindful issue, Limex can replace traditional materials and be used for business cards and packages. The new material is used for a menu at Yoshinoya beef bowl restaurants in Japan while it’s also attracting people’s attention as plastic bags provided at supermarkets are being charged for environmental reasons.
In addition to recycling collected materials into equivalent products, the technology enables to create a value-added product such as converting collected old Limex-made menus into new bowls, which they call ‘up-cycle’. The company runs their business in over 30 counties by licensing their technologies to local partners in over 30 countries, exploring potential partnership with manufacturing companies as well as investment. They were ranked in the second place both in Nikkei’s Next Unicorn Survey and For Startups’ estimated valuation raking.
Metro Engine
With the increasing supply of hotels and vacation rentals, price wars with competitors are intensifying for owners. It is difficult for them to hire experienced pricing managers, and price adjustment process ridiculously time-consuming. Metro Engine provides hotels with dynamic pricing function (enabling them to maximize profit by price optimization) leveraging AI-powered demand forecast forecasting. It’s currently used by more than 30 hotel chains in Japan.
The platform offers sales management, demand forecasting, past data analysis, OTA (online travel agency) ranking and other functions for hotels, as well as other services supporting demand forecasting and pricing for car rental agencies and rental property owners. In the future, the company wants to offer the best means of transportation for visitors by aggregating data from car rentals, highway bus, events, and trains as well as hotels. Having partnered with Toppan Printing, the company was qualified for both the IBM BlueHub (inbound) open innovation program and the JR East Accelerator Program 2nd batch.
SAgri gets soil conditions (corrosion content) using satellite data and updates on farm products and varieties from farmers to create a blockchain-powered database. Putting these altogether, the company tells farmers how to improve soil conditions from biological, chemical and physical viewpoints in addition to offering them with accurate measurement to help farmers get more harvest. They have also developed a scoring scheme evaluating farmland by soil conditions data and macro data of corrosion content.
Conventional methods measuring nitrogen in soil were expensive while the company has succeeded in lowering the cost using satellite data. Focused on what, rice and sugar cane, the technology can give farmers harvest prediction and advise them how much fertilizer they should use. By sending all these insights to financial institutions, the company encourages them give loans to local farmers in India while the Japanese government leverages the technology to determine the status of fallow fields to see if then can resume cultivation. They were qualified for the MUFG Digital Accelerator 4th Batch and the 500 Kobe 3rd Batch.
Terra Drone
Terra Drone provides drone-powered services for industry use. In August, Drone Industry Insights published the Service Provider Ranking for this year and put Terra Drone in the second place following ZipLine. Currently targeting markets include oil and gas fields, power houses and grids, mines and quarries. The technology visualizes the layout of power grids in 3D using LIDAR data from drones while the recently-launched technology enables aerial livestreaming for hot spot corrosion monitoring for pipelines.
Other use cases include detecting crime from high places, detecting gas leaks in pipelines, and ultrasonic flaw detection in LNG tanks. With the unique feature of their LIDAR-based mapping technology that can visualize terrain data, demand for the technology is growing in many industries, especially in the construction one. The company is looking at series A round funding soon, exploring partnerships with local companies in Thailand and other Southeast Asian markets.
Optimind
Oprimind has developed a route planner for last-mile delivery providers called Looqia, leveraging the Combinational Optimization technology spun off from Nagoya University. In addition to Looqia as SaaS (Software as a Service), the company offers an algorithm platform as PaaS (Platform as a Service) and R&D service for enterprises. Logistics companies had been planning routes and delivery orders manually, but Looqia allows them to find the most efficient route considering traffic conditions and parking / loading restrictions on roads.
The platform can complete route plannings in 100 seconds for 30 drop-offs for each of 5 deliverers. It also has functions allowing drivers to less u-turns, helping them find easy parking lots, appropriately allocating tasks to deliverers. Their targeting industries include home delivery providers, food, liquor and medicine wholesalers, as well as vending machine vendors. In order to create a local routeing map, the company wants to partner with companies owning car driving data in Thailand. They won the Demo Day at Post LogiTech Innovation Program Batch 1, or the startup acceleration program by Japan Post.
This article was rearranged by our editorial from the original by Momoko Furukawa, Assistant to Executive/PR at TalentEx. TalentEX is a Bangkok-based startup offering a media outlet and an online platform for recruitment and human resources. All the photos in this article were taken by Tomohiro Ueno, Corporate Planning at TalentEx. See our past coverage to learn more about TalentEx. See the original story in Japanese. The Japanese Embassy in Thailand together with the CP Group (Charoen Pokphand Group), operating 7/11 convenience stores in Thailand and also owning local mobile telco giant True, held a Demo Day and matchmaking event called Rock Thailand in March, aiming to help Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates to work together. The event is part of the Open Innovation Columbus (OIC) initiative, which promotes strategic alliances between Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates. With regards to OIC-related events, this follows the DX Summit held by the Japanese Embassy in Thailand last October. The majority of Thai conglomerates do not reap the benefits of a digital economy. In Japan, large companies are moving to start digital transformation (DX) by collaborating with startups (it’s so called ‘open innovation’), while in Thailand, due to the nature of the verticals…
This article was rearranged by our editorial from the original by Momoko Furukawa, Assistant to Executive/PR at TalentEx. TalentEX is a Bangkok-based startup offering a media outlet and an online platform for recruitment and human resources.
All the photos in this article were taken by Tomohiro Ueno, Corporate Planning at TalentEx.
The Japanese Embassy in Thailand together with the CP Group (Charoen Pokphand Group), operating 7/11 convenience stores in Thailand and also owning local mobile telco giant True, held a Demo Day and matchmaking event called Rock Thailand in March, aiming to help Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates to work together. The event is part of the Open Innovation Columbus (OIC) initiative, which promotes strategic alliances between Japanese startups and Thai conglomerates. With regards to OIC-related events, this follows the DX Summit held by the Japanese Embassy in Thailand last October.
The majority of Thai conglomerates do not reap the benefits of a digital economy. In Japan, large companies are moving to start digital transformation (DX) by collaborating with startups (it’s so called ‘open innovation’), while in Thailand, due to the nature of the verticals that local startups specialize in, DX through open innovation will likely still take time.
In response to this, OIC selected a team of 10 Japanese startups that lead verticals likely to be useful for DX (AI, robotics, IoT, logistics), and that are particularly interested in advancing into Southeast Asia, including Thailand, and invited them to Bangkok. This is an attempt at targeting cross-border open innovation and focuses on using the power of Japanese startups to foster DX for Thai conglomerates.
Representatives from the 10 Japanese startups pitched in front of top executives from major corporations such as CP Group’s CEO Suphachai Chearavanont, the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT), major retailer TCC known for its beer brewing brand Chang, Kasikornbank, the Thai royal family-backded SCG (Siam Cement Group), and the big name in hospital management BDMS (Bangkok Dusit Medical Service). Individual consultations between representatives were also made with the goal of establishing cooperative relationships starting with a PoC (proof of concept).
A committee made up of 10 venture capitalists and media personnel from Japan who have deep knowledge of the startup scenes in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, selected the startups to participate in this first edition of the event.
The following is an introduction of the participating startups. They are introduced in the order that they pitched. The collaboration specifics were not disclosed except between the Thai conglomerates and startups, so we introduce only the comments from participating startups.
PKSHA Technology
Yugo Takino, VP of Product, PKSHA TEchnology
PKSHA Technology (TSE: 3993) develops algorithm solutions focused on natural language processing, image recognition, machine learning and deep learning technologies. The company also develops function-specific algorithm modules and provides services to use them as core functions/ sub-functions for various software/hardware. Founded by engineers and researchers who conduct algorithm research, approximately 70% of PKSHA’s engineers who have completed doctoral programs make up their team along with a collection of qualified personnel with academic expertise. PKSHA said that their resources could be used to provide services adapted to each industry such as weather and equipment maintenance.
ABEJA
Naoki Tonogi, Managing Director, ABEJA Singapore
ABEJA provides all kinds of solutions for a variety of industries using its core technology, the AI platform “ABEJA Platform”. The company uses deep learning to automatically extract feature values from accumulated big data without human intervention.
Naoki Tonogi, Managing Director of ABEJA Singapore, cited three of ABEJA’s strengths.
ABEJA can provide services for all industrial fields.
The company has developed services internationally, and has already achieved results, especially in Southeast Asia.
In addition to providing solutions with AI, the company produces its own products.
Tonogi shared the following comments regarding the company’s participation in Rock Thailand.
We were able to talk with major conglomerates including CP Group. Companies that we had already talked to said they’d like to work together, and we were able to propose approaches using AI tailored to each task such as smart factories, smart cities, smart stores to the others. Because of the back-up from the Japanese government, it seems possible to create a cooperative system for innovation with the conglomerates in Thailand, rather than receiving a simple project order from them.¥
It’s been about two years since I came to Singapore and Thailand, but over the past year or so the interest of corporate management in AI has greatly increased, and we were able to put together a number of projects with them. Based on the idea central to our company ‘implementing a fruitful world’, we would like to implement a rich society in Thailand for all the people involved in AI.
Spun off from the University of Tokyo, LPixel has a strength in image analysis for life science. The company is developing software and optimizing AI technology for image analysis in life science such as medicine, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture. They continue to research and develop medical image diagnosis support using AI in cooperation with the National Cancer Center Japan and a number of other medical institutions. They have expanded into Cambridge, US to provide global services.
Yoshihiko Suenaga, Head of Overseas Strategy Division, Skydisc
Skydisc develops IoT sensor devices and services that allows users to analyze the data collected using AI. It has most often been introduced in the manufacturing industry, and contributes to creating smart factories by diagnosing abnormalities in machines, increasing yield rates, and improving the accuracy of inspections.
Masahiko Yamada, Co-founder and Managing Director, Umitron
Umitron is working on solutions for food and environmental issues by using technology for aquaculture. The company has offices in Singapore and Japan and it provides services using IoT, satellite remote sensing, and machine learning. Umitron Cell, a smart feeder recently announced by the company, allows users to feed cultured fish on schedule and monitor their appearance autonomously or remotely.
Masahiro Yamada, Co-founder and Managing Director of Umitron, shared shared the following impressions regarding participation in Rock Thailand.
I’ve participated in many matching events, but I’ve never been to an event that left me so satisfied. Top class executives from the country’s top conglomerates gathered together, the interviews were set up, and I was able to meet the people I wanted to meet, so it was really great.
I was able to talk with nearly all the conglomerates (that participated), and my first order of business is to begin discussions regarding their on-site issues. As far as business partners in Thailand, I expect there is a good chance for collaboration.
Telematic startup SmartDrive provides services to collect travel data from cars and other mobility devices and then visualize and analyze it. Their services include SmartDrive Fleet (real-time vehicle management for corporations), SmartDrive Cars (flat-rate connected cars for personal use), SmartDrive Families (monitoring of the elderly), and Public Service (mapping of dangerous areas and traffic sharing). The company has also focused on developing sensors, including drive recorders, and creating its own route for data acquisition.
Ryosuke Shimohara, VP of B2B Business, Smart Shopping
Smart Shopping is a price comparison site for daily goods and food and serves over 400,000 users. In October of last year, the company launched a new product called SmartMat, an IoT device equipped with weight sensors that enables automatic recurring orders and inventory replenishment for consumables. It is primarily desgined for corporations tand automates the task of always keeping the necessary amount of items that may be easy to forget to order. With Smart Shopping, the pre-consumption weight of the product is stored in the company’s product database and based on regular weight checks asks the user to authorize purchases when the remaining weight is low.
Ryosuke Shimohara, VP of B2B Business, Smart Shopping, shared the following comments about participating in Rock Thailand.
For WHA, a big name in Thai industrial parks and rental warehouses, we were able to propose added value for logistics facilities, solutions for their factory customers, and supply chain optimization using Smartmats. For the CP Group, Singha (beer brand), and Siam Makro (Thailand’s answer to Costco), we were able to propose the introduction of an automatic recurring ordering solution for retail stores using SmartMats. We hope this will lead to the acquisition of large customers when developing business in Thailand, and lead to partnerships in Southeast Asia, including Thailand.
Ground
Takatsugu Kobayashi, Chief Data Officer and Head of Global Innovation, Ground
Ground provides logistics solutions with “Intelligent Logistics” as its company slogan. Starting with picking operations in warehouses, the company has built a platform combining robots and AI software to optimize logistics.
Problems that companies often encounter include too many options for consumers, consumers becoming easily bored, and the inability to detect consumer behavior in advance (such as cancellations). Ground uses machine learning based on a customer database that can identify consumers’ behavior. Then, based on demand forecasts, it predicts the number of products to be made and the number of sales, and aims to improve the efficiency of all logistics operations.
Takatsugu Kobayashi, Chief Data Officer and Head of Global Innovation, Ground shared his impressions of participating in Rock Thailand.
We talked with several conglomerates, but we are especially considering whether we can provide solutions to the CP Group, Kasikornbank, and WHA. We believe that we can accelerate the development of our company’s AI logistics software ‘DyAS’ and aim for early market-in to Thailand.
For startups that offer both hardware and software like ours, both the speed and scale axes are required–more so than regular startups. In terms of business expansion, if you don’t take the three big steps PoV (Proof of Value) > PoC (Proof of Concept) > PoB (Proof of Business), it is very difficult. In that sense, business development in mature markets tends to be expensive for explanation and introduction costs, and startups with weak capital capabilities are likely to struggle.
However, after talking with the representatives from the conglomerates, such concerns have been lowered. I felt like in the current age we cannot compete overseas (especially with Amazon and Alibaba) if we don’t market-in early (in Thailand) and support reverse innovation in Japan.
Souco
Kunehito Nakahara, Founder and CEO, Souco
Souco is a logistics sharing platform that has built an online database of warehouses and matches companies that want to lend warehouses with those that would like to rent them. The company simplified the procedures necessary to complete before using the space and made it easy to begin using warehouses with a “small lot” for a “short period” in 3 days minimum from the application date. Since the service launch, user growth has been steady and registered users have reached more than 300 companies.
Hacobu offers a shared logistics platform called Movo. Thanks to the cloud and hardware such as the IoT devices managing moving vehicles, the company solves problems like vehicle dispatch (as an integrated logistics management solution, solves the problem of the difficulty of finding trucks to dispatch), operation management (solves the problem of not knowing location information of the trucks), and berth management (solves the problem of using trucks efficiently because of waiting time).
From left: Polapatr Suvarnazorn (SVP, Thai Beverage), Takatsugu Kobayashi (Ground Chief Data Officer and Head of Global Innovation, Ground), Naoki Tonogi (Managing Director, Abeja Singapore)
Following their pitches, there was a networking opportunity where talks about collaborations between Thai conglomerates and Japanese startups were lively. Thai executives also had positive comments to share about joining Rock Thailand.
Pichairat Jiranunrat, Director of Robotics AI & Intelligent Solution at PTT, says:
Thailand has long established good relationships with Japan and Japanese companies, and I think of Japan as a “good friend”. Based on this trust, perhaps we can create something even more new?
I felt that it’s important to incorporate technology (like that introduced today) into our company.
Yojiro Koshi (center), CEO of TalentEX, also also participated in the networking party.
Translated by Amanda Imasaka Edited by Masaru Ikeda
Open Innovation Columbus (OIC) 
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
