Ariya Banomyong, LINE’s appointed managing Director for Thailand gave Techsauce an in-depth look at how this billion dollar company developed and expanded while offering entrepreneurial advice for startups within Thailand. 

In Thailand, people spend roughly about 4 hours a day on the internet. The traffic is mainly coming from apps and the Data is easily collected from our platform. 

As it stands across ecosystems we have startups, great ideas and financial investors.They are all key contributors to the development of the platforms that encourage economic and business development. Big Data is another crucial tool that we have at our disposal now, collected through the developments of technology that can serve big businesses to implement and grow their products and services.

E-Commerce is becoming the natural path for businesses to take across the spectrum of industries. When entering a new market it’s important to do research and find people within that country who can help with cross-cultural business immersion.

Across the world, we have over 45 million users of the LINE platform. It’s mainly across Asia, with Japan, Singapore and Thailand as our largest markets. Thailand alone has 42 million of our users which is 92% of our users.  We have implemented a new team over the last few years who have helped to create the LINE characters that can be used as stickers on the application. This has helped to boost our usage as Thai’s love advertising that is fun and emotional advertising.

Our most successful ads have been one’s filed with the characters that we developed. This appealed to the Thai psyche and helped to develop a strong percentage of users. If you want to develop your brand, understanding the culture of the country you are in is key.

The only way for us to compete in the market is to be hyper-vigilant while developing new platforms just for Thailand. This is how we get ahead in the market. Some of the services we offer now are LINE TV, Line Man - ‘the go-to platform’, games and content services that supply news etc, e-commerce, advertising and online payment services.

In the tech industry ‘to save the world you have to disrupt it’. We as a business first and foremost have to make money, but we also want to make sure we are providing solutions and helping people in the process.

Our next move is to connect more people across Thailand with the internet and provide them with high-speed internet. This population is discovering the internet via the line app. As it stands people are using the internet for passive consumption, such as watching videos and reading news and not actually creating anything with it.

We want to help these people, businesses and startups to thrive through connectivity and growth with the use of the internet. What we do on our platform is collect 45 million users with taxi drivers, shops and restaurants etc to build a brand online and grow a presence online, drive traffic to their website and grow a substantial following.

We had a strategic business model of not taking any commissions, 0% and instead we offer traffic driven to their website and platforms daily.

We have LINE taxi which looks to facilitate and help taxi drivers in Bangkok. We first have to understand what drives the mindset of Thai taxi drivers to help serve them the best we can.

90% of the content that is on the platform is money that goes back to Thai startups. It’s an investment into the ecosystem to provide support to local businesses. We want to help startups and tech businesses as it’s a win-win for us and them.

It creates jobs that weren't there before while investing to make money and create tech players within the market. We want our platform to develop and facilitate these tech startups to grow.

We also focus heavily on how the government and private sectors can work together to create a strong foundation for businesses to flourish.

How can we get the government to work with tech? The government laws need to change for example if we take the invention of blockchain, for example, there is a lack of knowledge there so governments feel the need to automatically ban. We need to educate them and work with them to work closely with making tech implemented securely within Thailand.

In the short term, we have to grow local talent, in whichever country we are in. While considering entering foreign markets we need to focus on cultural differences and strengthen ties that enable growth and develop cohesive business plans that fit with the cultural underpinning of that country. 

Ariya Banomyong joined LINE Thailand in October 2015 as the territory’s first Managing Director. His responsibilities include overseeing business strategies and operations for LINE in Thailand, setting up new ventures, and developing leadership teams. And, in addition to enhancing business opportunities for LINE Thailand, Ariya is also active in building the start-up community and ecosystem in general in Thailand. With 18 years of international experience in technology and mobile, Ariya has a track record of strong leadership and extensive knowledge of the industry. Prior to joining LINE, Ariya was the first Country Head of Google Thailand, where he was responsible for sales and business development. He also served as the Chief Commercial Officer at True Corporation, Thailand’s leading telecom, where he led the company’s convergence strategy. Ariya holds two Master's degrees – one in Mathematics and IT from the University of Marne-La-Vallée in France, and the other in Management from the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. He also speaks four languages – Thai, English, French and German.