Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa) joins force with HUBBA and Techstars to organize the ‘Startup Battleground’ Hackathon in Digital Thailand Big Bang 2018, which opens for application until September 9, 2018.

Dr.Chinawut Chinaprayoon, Vice President of Startup Institute, Digital Economy Promotion Agency revealed that the agency has worked with HUBBA, a growth entrepreneur platform, and Techstars, one of the world’s leading accelerators, to host the ‘Startup Battleground’ Hackathon in the upcoming Digital Thailand Big Bang 2018. The Hackathon will be competed under 10 topics in line with the government’s ten S-Curved targeted industries which are expected to mainly drive the country’s economic growth in the future.

“This activity will be the highlight in Digital Thailand Bigbang 2018. We will provide the platform and attract newcoming startups in seed stage to join and pitch their ideas to create new innovations to further develop our ten targeted industries. At the same time, this will be a chance for those startups to gain more experience from workshops and pitching,” he said.

The ten topics for the pitching comprise 1. Travel Tech 2. Food Tech 3. Agri Tech 4. Software as a Service (SaaS) 5.Living Tech 6. EdTech 7. Green Tech 8. HR Tech 9. E-Commerce and 10. Health Tech. The winner among all topics will be rewarded 500,000 baht in cash and the winners in each topic will receive cash worth 100,000 baht. In addition, the Hackathon’s partners will also have special rewards separately. The combined value of all awards are not less than 1.5 million baht.

Due to the cooperation among three parties – the public sector, the private sector that understands the startup ecosystem and the private sector that has expertise in international startups, this hackathon is believed to make a good impact and attract a large number of participants. Besides, the ideas that are pitched in the hackathon will be considered to further develop and be applied in the business and targeted industries, fulfil Thailand 4.0

Amarit Charoenphan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of HUBBA, said the Hackathon is an important tool that both the public and private sectors in overseas use for gathering the ideas and searching for new innovations to develop their business and industrial sectors. Meanwhile, the Hackathon is both the platform and the starting point to incubate and enhance new startups’ potential until some of them become the well-known startups today. For Thailand, some startups who have joined the Hackathon are now successful.

“We believe there are opportunities and room to apply technology and innovation with ten key industries and trust that this Hackathon will be useful for the private sector, the industrial sector and the startups’ growth in line with HUBBA’s vision that wants to support the creation of the startup ecosystem,” said Amarit.

The ‘Startup Battleground’ Hackathon will take place in Digital Thailand Big Bang 2018 during September 19-23 at Challenger 3, IMPACT Muang Thong Thani. The activities include the workshops by Thai and foreign startup experts including the speakers from Techstars. The competition has three rounds, which are selection, semi-final and final.

For startups who are keen to applying, they have to apply as a group of 4-8 people. All nationalities are welcome but they have to reside in Thailand, have the experience in fundraising of not over $2 million and have the idea that can be further developed in the Hackathon. The application is open until September 9. For further information, please browse https://digitalthailandbigbang.com/hackathon or call 086-415-0979.