Dtac accelerate announced Batch 6 finalists

In search for heavyweight start-ups with global potential Telenor-owned dtac in Thailand has announced the 11 startup finalists, selected out of 25 teams, to participate in the dtac accelerate batch 6 (group of start-ups round six) incubator program.

The finalists, announced on Pitch Day, will receive seed funding, ranging from 500,000-1.5 million baht per team, and commercialization support from dtac, worth more than 100 million baht. They will also be participating in an intensive boot camp that runs from May to August 2018.

The final pitch and the announcement of winners will take place on Demo Day in August. The 11 finalists include:
1. Kohlife – Plan and book all ground transportation combining with flight, activities and event in Thailand and worldwide
2. Zwiz.AI – AI is the first AI Chatbot platform that allows any businesses to get AI Chatbot with Analytics tools in a minute.
3. PenguinT – Travel Tech start-up bringing the best fare from local travel agencies into mobile and service though chat channel.
4. Kochii – Entertainment Tech start-up. Platform help gamer improve gaming skill by professional players / Udemy for game and esport.
5. Event Banana – Online platform that allows property owners to easily rent out and promote their under-utilised spaces while enables people to find and book those spaces for their meeting & event, easily as booking a hotel room.
6. GoWabi – Beauty Tech start-up with a mobile application offering special deals for spa and beauty services.
7. Ooca – Health Tech start-up offering an online platform connecting patients and psychologists via video calls.
8. Somjai Home Loan – Somjai Home Loan is a one stop home loan application service for property developer.
9. CareerVisa – Education Tech start-up offering personalized career development platform that helps you explore career choices with mentors, set the right career goal, identify and close skill gap and land your right job.
10. Noburo – Fin Tech startup- providing Lending-as-a-Service platform, for businesses to start lending to their customers, simple, flexible and worry-free.
11. Doctor A-Z – Health Tech start-up offering a platform that provide match medical tourism surgical patient to the most suitable high quality JCI hospital , trusted specialist doctors at affordable price .

“It was another tough year for the judges as they had to select the top 11 out of over 500 startups pitching to Thailand’s top 9 start-up mentors. The standard of start-ups is remarkably improving, in terms of market validation where they make sure there is market demand for their product; product-market fit where the product is validated and gets the first 100 customers; and growth hacking that aims to grow and expand the business to reach 1 million customers. Most of the start-ups have team members who are domain experts in the industry and have a good understanding of problems or pain points. For instance, there are many doctors or medical professionals in health tech start-ups, including Doctor A-Z, whose co-founder is a doctor, while Noburo is co-founded by a financial expert. Teams have started to adopt new tools, such as AI and machine learning. Interestingly, more than 50% of founders or co-founders of this year’s start-up teams are women, which is significantly higher than previous years,” said Mr. Sompoat Chansomboon, Managing Director of dtac accelerate.

“All the finalists will participate in an intensive world class boot camp with world class mentors, including Nir Eyal, whose Hooked Model is behind Facebook and Instagram’s success, and Hai Habot, one of the world’s top OKR experts. The program also provides tools from global partners, such as Google Cloud, Facebook, Microsoft Tencent Cloud, and AWS and commercialization support worth over 100 million Baht from dtac and companies under Telenor Group in 13 markets. The 11 finalists bring what dtac accelerate is looking for, i.e., creativity, business innovations to the Mobile Internet Ecosystem, and new concept lifestyle applications to improve the quality of life of the Thai people.”

dtac Accelerate has been described as Thailand’s no.1 accelerator hothouse that empowers early-stage start-ups through mentorship and financial support. Start-up accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. dtac Accelerate has already raised the standard of start-up incubators in Thailand – named third best incubator in Southeast Asia.

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