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Published on September 18, 2007

The project aims to support new companies, giving them access to business facilities provided in the incubation centre.

In a 5,000-square-metre area of the OSMEP office at Rachadam-nern Road where the Incubation Digital Content Enterprise Centre is located, new entrepreneurs will be facilitated with a wide range of assistance in business and technology.

Pojjamarn Keattitorm, an adviser at Sipa, said the move is to encourage both local SMEs and the local software industry. It aims to meet and match the demand and supply of the software industry through the joint efforts of OSMEP and Sipa.

Sipa's role in this collaboration is to provide software and services as business tools through a number of local software houses to selected SME companies in the centre, where some software and technology facilities are provided and run by Sipa. It is called Sipa's Software Activity Centre.

Software services available in Sipa's 2,000-square-metre Software Activity Centre include digital-content development, enterprise software, embedded software applications, and open-source software development services.

Sipa also plans to provide the entire ranges of ICT services with the aim of training new SME businesses to become familiar with the use of technology, especially software.

The agency also aims for a return to the local software industry in the form of jobs and markets for local software companies.

"The role of our centre is to provide ICT learning for SMEs selected by OSMEP. This group is likely to be potential customers for local software companies," said Pojjamarn.

Meanwhile, the OSMEP will provide a wide range of support through business mentors to train and incubate new start-up companies in business strategy, business plans, marketing plans, approaching funding sources and accessing global markets.

The centre will be opened next month.

Apart from the collaboration with OSMEP, the centre has also joined with one of the large industrial estates, Amata Industrial Park, to establish a project to provide ICT and software training to over 600 staff in the industrial park. Along with the training service, the agency also plans to survey the requirements of these manufacturers on behalf of local software houses.

Rungruang Limchoopatipa, an executive at Sipa, said the agency hopes to generate around Bt5 billion in income for the local software industry from this collaboration in the first year of operation, which is around 1 per cent of the total revenue of around Bt500 billion for the whole of Amata Industrial Park per year.

"This project is a three-year collaboration during which we target to create software demand for the local industry worth Bt20 billion or around 5 per cent of the Amata Industrial Park's total revenue during the period," said Rungruang. 

 

Asina Pornwasin

 The Nation