Thailand
Cambodia: Kingdom startup scene ‘stable’
Cambodia’s startup scene remains stable despite its lower global and regional ranking, a leading report analyzing last year’s startup trends, said. The Global Startup Ecosystem Index, created by StartupBlink, is considered the world’s most comprehensive startup ecosystem ranking.
Although the nation was globally ranked 103 and seventh regionally, the report says the country offers a lot of promises with the capital city Phnom Penh finding a place among the ‘top 1,000’ locations for startups across the world.
With a total score of 0.378, Phnom Penh was ranked 697. The startup superstars of the city include FirstFinance MFI and Pi Pay (fintech), ATEC Biodigesters (clean energy), vKirirom, DirexPlay and Beebush (social and leisure), BookMeBus (public transport), YouAdMe (marketing and sales), Cambodiawebhosting.com, Yak Khmer and Somleng (ICT), Clik and Joonak Delivery (eCommerce) and Muuve (food delivery).
Among the Asean nations, Singapore emerged as the topper (seventh rank) followed by Indonesia (38), Malaysia (42) Thailand (53) and the Philippines (57).
“Asia-Pacific regional performance is generally positive. Only six of the 19 ranked countries in this region decreased their rankings, consolidating the area as a global leader in innovation,” the report observed.
“The region’s ecosystems are maturing, as seven out of the 10 Asian Pacific countries ranked in the top 50 have improved their rankings. In the global top 100 cities, the region increased from 20 to 22, showing that the region is growing its global dominance, with three countries now in the global top 10,” it added.
Meanwhile, a separate report by DealStreetAsia earlier found the startup funding falling by 31 per cent in 2022 when compared to the previous year. However, the region’s startups raised $17.79 billion in equity and debt funding with the equity deals seeing an increase of 9.6 per cent.
According to startupsandplaces.com, a prominent website tracking start-up scenarios across the world, there are many factors that make Cambodia’s nascent startup scene stronger. And they include a large share of female as well as tech-skilled founders.
“The share of female founders stood at 35 per cent while in Singapore (the highest ranking country in the region) it was 27.5 per cent,” startupsandplaces.com pointed out.
“Over 60 per cent of startups are founded by techies in Cambodia – whereas top startup hubs like London or Tel Aviv has 29 and 45 per cent techie-founded startups, respectively.”
There are many other factors that make Cambodia conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship. They include effective entrepreneurial policies, entrepreneurial talent along with mentoring platforms. As of now, only one unicorn (Grab Singapore) maintains an office in the country. It is expected that the nation will be able to gradually instil entrepreneurial culture within the national societies while addressing the shortcomings systematically.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance has always been exerting efforts to further enhance the startup scenario. And a four-day meeting between Cambodian and Israeli delegates held last September was one of the major steps in this regard.
The delegates from the West Asian nation shared the success story of Israel – a leader in startups and home to many globally-renowned unicorns.
According to Dr Chhieng Vanmunin, CEO of Khmer Enterprise and one of the key organisers, the initiative served as a perfect platform to connect two countries’ delegates from dynamic backgrounds to access each other’s network, available resources, skills, and technology.
“The meeting with Israeli authorities and investment firms allowed our local entrepreneurs to understand how the Israeli tech ecosystem was built, and how it works to feed the global demand.”
He added that the progress of startup sector is envisaged by
the Cambodia Digital Economy and Society Policy Framework 2021-2035.
Source: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501278436/kingdom-startup-scene-stable/