| SCGP, a multinational consumer packaging solutions business based in Thailand, which sells fiber, performance and polymer packaging, medical supplies and lab ware, food service products, and pulp and paper products, also offers designs and print solutions for customers who want to place their brands on its packaging products. But it wasn’t reaching a significant group of customers. In Thailand small and medium sized businesses represent the biggest portion of the market. The country has more than 700,000 restaurants and a lot of street food vendors. Many are interested in reinforcing their brands on food packaging but the market is extremely fragmented. “To scale up and capture this fragmented market we needed to use technology to enable the process and find the right business model,” says Tum Patompong, who worked in business development at SCGP for 10 years. He had the idea to start a new business focused on the SME market and did just that with the help of Bangkok-based RISE, which describes itself as an innovation-focused consulting firm. RISE’s services include a venture building program that helps organizations in SE Asia like SCGP to leverage technology and innovate in new ways. RISE, which organizes an annual corporate innovation summit in Bangkok each October, offers four services: innovation consulting; venture building to help large corporates spin-out new companies; executive education and talent upskilling; and ecosystem building. It says it currently works with more than 400 large corporates and some 20,000 startups. “Southeast Asia is not a hub of deeptech like the U.S., Europe or China so if major companies want to leverage technology to be able to reduce costs or start a new venture that will survive and be competitive they need help,” says Supachai “Kid” Parchariyanon, the founder of both RISE and SeaX Ventures, a deeptech venture capital fund that, among other things, connects startups with corporates. “They can’t do it on their own just yet.” | 