About GEN in Thailand

In 2011, GEN partnered with Ayana Co. Ltd to bring its flagship Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) campaign to Thailand. The initial campaigns successfully brought in partners from Thailand's nascent entrepreneurial community and grew steadily. The 2012 edition reached more than 6,000 people through dozens of events, and the 2013 campaign grew to more than 8,000 participants as activities spread from Bangkok into other cities. In these early years, GEW centered on connecting students, first-time founders, and ecosystem leaders to one another, planting the seeds for more than a decade of ecosystem building.

As the campaign matured, GEN appointed Dato’ Steve Cheah to lead year-round convening and coordinating efforts. In 2015, the scope of GEW activities widened from awareness events into structured hackathons, pitch nights, and startup weekends. The government took notice and partnered with GEN to connect Thailand to ecosystem builders throughout the region.

In September 2017, GEN and Thailand's Ministry of Digital Economy and Society hosted GEC+ Bangkok, a regional extension of GEN's Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC). Held over four days as part of the Digital Thailand Big Bang event at Bangkok's IMPACT Exhibition and Convention Center, the program featured more than 50 sessions, a comprehensive regulatory sandbox workshop, and a thorough examination of the government's Thailand 4.0 Digital Agenda.

To continue the momentum, GEN established a local affiliate, GEN Thailand, led by Cheah, to carry the work forward on a continuous basis. GEN Thailand began implementing programs across education, youth engagement, and cross-border collaboration. It has connected Thai founders, students, and institutions to a global network of mentors, investors, and peers, while embedding entrepreneurial thinking into formal education.

A core GEN program in Thailand is Pitch@School—a youth venture-creation program run alongside host school Vajiravudh College and co-organizer Chulalongkorn School of Integrated Innovation. Through this initiative, the affiliate pairs students with corporate partners and coaches to turn early ideas into workable pitches. This effort sits alongside the UNESCO Entrepreneurship Education Network (EE-Net), which Cheah has led since 2024. The thread running through these programs is a conviction that early exposure to solving real-world business challenges broadens who comes to see entrepreneurship as a viable career path.

Government engagement has remained a consistent feature of GEN's work in Thailand. At GEC+ Bangkok in 2017, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha led sessions that convened regional government officials with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society. GEN has recognized Thai policy leadership directly.  For example, Dr. Pichet Durongkaveroj, a senior science and technology policy leader who served as Thailand's Minister of Digital Economy and Society, received the 2016 Startup Nations Award for National Policy Leadership. Thailand's National Innovation Agency has remained a key partner with Executive Director Dr. Krithpaka Boonfueng leading Thai delegations to GEN’s global events.

GEN supports Thai founders through its global programs. GEN Thailand runs a national selection for the Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC), the global pitch competition GEN launched in 2019, which offers founders training, mentorship, and a share of $1 million in annual prizes. Thai national finalists have reached the EWC's global Top 100, including Jasberry, an organic-rice enterprise founded by Peetachai “Neil” Dejkraisak in 2021, and Hybrid Aerator, a wastewater-treatment venture founded by Boonyarit Soonphonrai in 2020. Dejkraisak is a member of the GEN Starters Club, a global community of vetted founders. Through this network, his company secured a distribution agreement placing its rice in Whole Foods stores across the United States.

GEN maintains relationships with a range of Thai institutions and partners, including the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, the National Innovation Agency, Chulalongkorn University, Vajiravudh College, and the Business Angel Network Southeast Asia (BANSEA), which connects the country's founders to regional early-stage capital. GEN's reach in Thailand extends well beyond Bangkok. For example, Hybrid Aerator, the EWC finalist, is based in Phuket, and its Starters Club connections extend into rural communities through Jasberry's work with thousands of rice-farming families across the country.

GEN’s president, Jonathan Ortmans, has been present at GEN’s most significant milestones in Thailand. He presented the 2016 Startup Nations Award to Dr. Durongkaveroj and helped convene the regional community to GEC+Bangkok. His engagement has helped link Thai leaders to GEN's global stage.

As GEN widens its reach in Thailand, it has positioned the country as a regional connector within Southeast Asia's entrepreneurial community through its ties to BANSEA, and its growing role in entrepreneurship education through the UNESCO EE-Net chapter. GEN continues to fold entrepreneurial training into schools and universities while opening pathways for Thai founders to compete and raise capital internationally. GEN's enduring goal in Thailand remains what it has been since those first campaigns: connecting the country's founders with the knowledge, networks, capital, and policy support they need to start and scale.