The Thailand India Business Council recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a networking platform for SMEs to establish a customized platform — the Thailand India GlobalLinker.
This platform aims to facilitate networking between Indian and Thai SMEs digitally along with enabling them to connect with other GlobalLinker members in Asia for new trade deals.
The MoU will help in getting Indian SMEs to network with the SMEs and industry bodies of Thailand and create more opportunities for themselves in Thailand. It will help SMEs to create a corridor to get new trade in sectors such as rubberwood, rubber tyres, tapioca, construction and cosmetics, the Co-founder and CEO of this firm stated.
A new corridor between India and Thailand will be created to connect SMEs, to enable them to strike new trade deals and is estimated to bring more than 40,000 SMEs from Thailand and India onto the platform.
Recent data shows that trade between the two nations has grown at least 60 per cent since 2016. Thailand is an investment-friendly destination and encourages opportunities from SMEs across sectors, around 25,000 SMEs are going to be benefitted from the partnership.
The two-way trade between India and Thailand stood at $12.46 billion in 2018 with around $7.60 billion in Thai exports to India and $4.86 billion in Indian exports to Thailand, according to the data available on the website of the Embassy of India in Thailand.
In addition, the country is India’s 5th largest trading partner after Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia in the ASEAN region.
The firm currently has more than 260,000 SMEs on the platform as it digitizes SMEs and connects them to other SMEs through the creation of digital business cards, digital business profiles, and digital product catalogues.
India has around 63 million MSMEs that contribute 45 per cent share to the manufacturing sector and close to 31 per cent to the services sector and employs more than 110 million Indians, as per the government data.
The digitalization of work environments
The move to establish this new corridor can be traced to the changing nature of work. In the last decade, the nature of work has fundamentally changed; there is a clear consensus that changes are inevitable and constant. Companies that understand this and are able to adapt quickly to changing landscape will survive.
Half of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared since the year 2000, either due to bankruptcy, acquisition, or ceased to exist as a result of digital disruption.
A phenomenon of innovate-or-die has emerged, and it is now a race of who can digitize faster.
Therefore, companies should look beyond their in-house innovation team as some innovations are readily available in the market. However, for a company’s in-house innovation team to succeed, the importance of a ground-up effort is key.
Pushing Thailand 4.0
Thailand 4.0, the country’s latest economic model, is designed to promote and support innovation, creativity, research and development, higher technologies and green technologies.
Dozens of global corporations have committed to invest in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), the three-province advanced development zone near Bangkok that will serve as a showcase for Thailand 4.0.
The Corridor consists of Rayong, Chonburi and Chachoengsao provinces. Government and private industries are already building some of the cutting-edge infrastructure required to turn the vision of the EEC into a reality.
Key parts of Thailand 4.0 emphasize “security, wealth and sustainability.” Already ranked as an upper-middle-income country, policymakers believe the strategy will result in the Kingdom graduating to high-income country status.
The other industries are next-generation automotive, intelligent electronics, advanced agriculture and biotechnology, food processing, tourism, digital, robotics, logistics, biofuels and biochemicals, and medical.
Therefore, this new network that will be established as a result of the Thailand India GlobalLinker is expected to help the country achieve its digital economy goals.
