With great success, MQDC India brought the Indian entrepreneurial spirit to Thailand by hosting a start-up challenge called the Whizdom Innovation challenge. 5 winning teams were chosen from over 100 applicants across India and were offered an incubation period in Thailand for them to gain global connects, industry knowledge and sharpen their entrepreneurial skills. In addition, MQDC India hosted a Campus Brand Ambassador program to select college students from top colleges as ambassadors for the soon to open Whizdom club in Delhi, India. Both these programs aim to engage with and contribute to the growth of the Indian start-up and student community respectively.

The incubation period in Thailand involved the winners of the Whizdom Innovation Challenge and Campus Brand Ambassador program attending the Techsauce Global summit 2019, one of Asia’s largest Tech Summit with over 15,000 attendees. MQDC India had a designated country pavilion for the Start-ups to showcase their business propositions and build connects with the global start-up community.

Furthermore, a two-day pitching masterclass and session was hosted by HUBBA for the incubation attendees. The first day was a full day of training and the second was a pitching session with prolific members of the Thailand start-up  ecosystem as jury members.

Startups from the Whizdom Innovation Challenge that took part were: 

1. Fresco Eggs: A startup that serves as a channel between egg farmers and retailers.
2. GuideRatna Travel & Tourism: A TravelTech startup that provides real time tour and guide reservation services. 
3. RealTell: An Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) startup. 
4. Synapptra Tech: A startup that provides an AI platform.

On the first day of training, HUBBA CSO and Corporate Innovation Director Archawat Chareonsilp led an intensive pitching masterclass with participating startups.  The class was divided into two parts. Each startup gave a pitch which was recorded and afterwards each startup received feedback on their pitches in order to pitch again. At the end they received feedback for their final pitches.    

Khun Archawat says, 

"It was a great joy to welcome startups from India to our humble home at Hubba-To.  We had so much fun. The entrepreneurial spirit displayed was unique and very strong.  There were some cool and disruptive ideas.  It was really a privilege to coach them and I wish all of them much success upon their return.  I surely hope that we will meet again perhaps as they expand their businesses to Thailand in the foreseeable future."

From the first day of training, startups were able to see their weak and strong points.  From this they were able to improve their pitching skills. It was great preparation before their real pitches in front of a committee of judges. 

On the second day startups received further training.  Each pitched in front of a committee of judges for 5 minutes and spent 10 minutes answering questions from the judges. 

The judges were: 

1. Tony William from Siam Cement Group Public Company Limited
2. Korapat Arunanondchai from K2 Venture Capital Company Limited
3. Vorawan Wangpanitkul from Digital Venture Company Limited
4. Vitavin Ittipanuvat from Beacon Venture Capital Company Limited
5. Thiti Thanesvorakul from IP Trading Company Limited

The pitching from the startups were quite exciting and intense.  Every team received comments and challenging questions from the judges. The overall winner was RealTell, a startup that uses AI and ML to help online retail businesses scale-up into the global market. 

Mr. Sanyam Gupta, a cofounder of RealTell, says “RealTell is a service that helps online retail businesses grow by using dynamic pricing.  From taking part in this training, we have received great opportunities and we are happy to have experienced training for our pitching skills.  We will take what we have learnt to develop ourselves in the future. We have to thank Whizdom India for helping us be a step closer to achieving our goals.   

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