THAILAND--Intel Capital, the world's largest investor in technology companies, is now looking to fund organizations in Thailand, and has been talking to several prospects about potential investments that could each amount to at least US$2 million.
This follows a decision by the venture capital organization of Intel, which last year invested over US$1 billion in technology companies, to start looking in earnest at investing in Southeast Asia, said Sudheer Kuppam, Intel Capital's managing director for India, Japan, Australasia and Southeast Asia.
"Hopefully, by the end of the year, you should hear of a couple of investments from Intel Capital [in Thailand]," Kuppam said. He added that the majority of the people here and in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia were trying to become tech-savvy, and Intel Capital believed that by supporting technology companies it would increase awareness.
"In the end, if you really look at our corporate revenue mix, 60 percent of Intel's revenue is coming from Asia-Pacific," Kuppam said. "We view these regions as the next-generation growth markets."
"We want to foster innovation and basically to speed any vectors that accelerate this potential growth for technology products and, at the end of the day, computer usage and telecommunications usage," he said.
Asked how much Intel might invest in a company here, Kuppam said it should be not less than US$2 million though the venture capitalist does not impose a limit. He pointed to Intel Capital's US$600 million investment in the U.S. company Clearwire, and another US$218 million in VMWare made in July.
After taking responsibility for the region in late March, Kuppam said he had assigned a manager based in Hong Kong to look for opportunities in Southeast Asia, adding that since July, Intel Capital had been talking to "multiple companies" here.
Across the region it was looking at potential investments in several areas, including games and animation, consumer Internet and "whatever" online, software and mobility solutions including mobile TV and location-based services, Kuppam said.
WiMax is another area of focus for Intel, which seeks to enlarge the PC ecosystem through venture funding. "At Intel, we believe that we have not yet seen the true impact of the technology revolution," he said.
Intel aggressively promoted the adoption and use of Wi-Fi through both strategic investments, and the deployment of its Centrino platform that incorporates an IEEE 802.11 radio, helping to make wireless connectivity synonymous with notebook computing.
More recently it has been advocating the benefits of WiMax for the deployment of broadband Internet. Kuppam said that Intel Capital had just announced it would fund Consistel, a Singapore company that specializes in solving problems of wireless coverage within buildings for mobiles and WiMax.
He acknowledged that regulatory and spectrum issues were holding several countries in the region back, but added that Intel would be behind efforts to explain the benefits.
Kuppam also praised Japan's forward-looking stance on WiMax which has been to allow any company that did not have a 3G license to bid for WiMax spectrum.
Although Intel Capital has been active in other markets since 1991--investing a total of US$6 billion in approximately 1,000 companies in over 40 countries--the venture capital organization only became active in Southeast Asia late last year when it invested in FPT, an ICT and telecoms company in Vietnam, Kuppam said.
As the world's largest technology investor, Intel Capital was the best partner to help small companies to reach international markets, he said. "Intel puts them on the map," Kuppam noted, adding that typically where Intel has gone, other venture capitalists follow.
Many observers have noted that Thailand suffers from a shortfall of venture capital funding and ICT Forward, a think tank focused on Thailand's ICT industry, said that last year more than US$1 billion was invested in equity funding into technology ventures in Malaysia, while the figure for Thailand was less than US$10 million.
Noting that even Vietnam's ICT industry today had far more investment money than Thailand's, the think tank calls this "a national tragedy"--but it is one that funds such as Intel Capital, could help to redress.
Kuppam, who is based in Bangalore, India, said that typically Intel Capital would invest between 10 and 30 percent of a company's equity, and that it was both "stage agnostic" and "sector agnostic"--meaning, it would not be looking at startups alone and any technology company could be a candidate, while it also made private investments into publicly-listed companies.
When Intel was founded some 40 years ago, it was with the help of venture capital funding and the company had not overlooked its origins, Kuppam noted.
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