depa-HUBBA kicks off "Startup Battleground Hackathon"

BANGKOK,Thailand,Sept. 26,2018 -- Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa),HUBBA Thailand and Techstars jointly announce the grand opening of the 'Startup Battleground' Hackathon in Digital Thailand Big Bang 2018 and boast that over 500 startups have submitted the applications to make a play for the rewards worth more than 1.5 million baht. Eat'em all,a new green tech startup,won the first prize after 5-day long competition.

The winner and track masters of Startup Battleground Hackathon received the rewards on the stage

Mr. Chatchai Khunpitiluck,Senior Executive Vice President of Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa) said that the Startup Battleground Hackathon is one of the highlights in Digital Thailand Big Bang 2018,which is co-hosted by the government's agency (depa),the Thai private sector (HUBBA Thailand) and the world's leading accelerator (Techstars). The objectives of this hackathon is to gather the ideas to create new innovations to support the government's ten targeted industries and to give a chance to new startups to gain experiences with experts in the workshop and the pitching.

"We received a good response from startups as over 500 startups in seed stage paraded to submit their applications to join the hackathon which has award worth 1.5 million baht in total. We are confident that this will be one of the greatest hackathons for the startups,of which the pitched ideas will be further developed in the targeted industries," said Mr. Chatchai

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 top three that have the most applicants are Living Tech,EdTech and e-Commerce,reflecting that there are still a plenty of ideas and pain points to be solved in these three industries.

Mr. Archawat Chareonsilp,Chief Strategy Officer of HUBBA Thailand said apart from the number of participants and the value of the awards,the Startup Battleground Hackathon has invited the experts in both Thai and global startup industries to share their knowledge and experiences to the participants,for example,Mr. Patai Padungtin,CEO and Evangelist of BUILK ONE Group,a construction management platform which has served contractors in five countries,Mr. Chris Chang,Program Manager for Techstars Adelaide Accelerator who has incubated startups across the APAC-region and Mr. Aldrich Huang,CEO and Co-Founder of UX Testing.

"Hackathon is generally known as a design sprint-like platform to fuel the potential of new startups. We believe that the sharing from Thai and global experts will grow over 500 participants,strengthen Thai startup ecosystem and be a significant factor to drive the creation of innovation for the country's development," said Mr. Archawat.

After 5-day long competition,Eat'em all,won the first prize and received 600,000 baht in cash. The team has developed a discount leftovers purchasing platform to help reduce the leftovers in restaurants. Eat'em all is now planning to improve their platform to become an application,increase their amount of active users,and add or develop a delivery system after winning the rewards.

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180925/2247574-1-a