SCGP, a multinational consumer packaging solutions business based in Thailand, which sells fiber, performance and polymer packaging, medical supplies and lab ware, food service products, and pulp and paper products, also offers designs and print solutions for customers who want to place their brands on its packaging products. But it wasn’t reaching a significant group of customers.
In Thailand small and medium sized businesses represent the biggest portion of the market. The country has more than 700,000 restaurants and many street food vendors. Many are interested in reinforcing their brands on food packaging, but the market is extremely fragmented. “To scale up and capture this fragmented market we needed to use technology to enable the process and find the right business model,” says Tum Patompong, who worked in business development at SCGP for 10 years. He had the idea to start a new business focused on the SME market and did just that with the help of Bangkok-based RISE, which describes itself as an innovation-focused consulting firm. RISE’s services include a venture building program that helps organizations in SE Asia like SCGP to leverage technology and innovate in new ways.
RISE, which organizes an annual corporate innovation summit in Bangkok each October, offers four services: innovation consulting; venture building to help large corporates spin-out new companies; executive education and talent upskilling; and ecosystem building. It says it currently works with more than 400 large corporates and some 20,000 startups.
“Southeast Asia is not a hub of deep tech like the U.S., Europe or China so if major companies want to leverage technology to be able to reduce costs or start a new venture that will survive and be competitive, they need help,” says Supachai “Kid” Parchariyanon, the founder of both RISE and SeaX Ventures, a deeptech venture capital fund that, among other things, connects startups with corporates. “They can’t do it on their own just yet.”
SCGP is a subsidiary of SCG, which was established in Thailand in 1913 to produce cement and has since grown into a leading industry group focused on building materials, chemicals and packaging. To get from idea to a standalone AI-powered thriving packaging supply chain platform that helps SMES design, customize and order minimum quantities, Patompong first participated in a RISE bootcamp. “We learned about the startup framework and how to create a build from scratch mindset, build a prototype and get customer feedback. With RISE’s help, it developed the business model and proved that we can spin-off and create a real business,” says Patompong.
“One problem with big companies is that when you invest in R&D it is often difficult to commercialize the product,” he says. “But if the person who has the idea is also the owner and the driver of the business with an entrepreneurial mindset and the intent to commercialize the product you can get a better outcome.”
He and his team set out to tackle the problems faced by the packaging industry: the supply is unorganized; producing customized products is difficult, requiring high minimum order quantities and high investment; price benchmarks and the negotiation process were completely offline; and the supply chain both invisible and unreliable.
Dezpax created an AI-powered packaging supply chain platform that involves more than 200 factories. “One factory can’t do everything,” he says, so the startup uses data management to separate orders, sending cup orders to cup factories, for example, and paper boxes to others. Dezpax offers an all categories price algorithm for on-demand logo printing and says its one stop platform offers customers a 10x lower minimum order quantity and the most competitive price. What’s more its packaging is eco-friendly: it offers 60 days biodegradable packaging and environmentally degradable plastics.
Dezpax was incubated in 2018. When it spun-out in 2020 after it hit key milestones,Patompong and his team were required to quit their jobs at the mother company. They took out a convertible loan from SCGP and used that money to buy out the assets and transfer them to the new company. In 2022 Dezpax proved that it could attract funding from the outside. It raised a $2 million A round from PTTOR, which owns more than 4,000 coffee shops located across Thailand, Next Ventures and Iseed Sea. In 2024 it raised another $2 million from J.T.Pack, one of the biggest packaging sales channels in Thailand. SCGP maintains a minority shareholding. Today Dezpax has more than 10,000 SME customers and has no direct competitors, says Patompong, who, along with the co-founder, owns a combined 47% in the company.“I never thought I would run my own packaging business,” he says.
An Ambition To Drive SE Asia’s GDP Growth
Parchariyanon says he is proud of Dezpax’s success. He points to other projects that he says has helped some of SE Asia’s biggest companies find ways to leverage new technologies and business models.For example, it helped Krungsri bank (Bank of Ayudhya) create the first fintech accelerator in Thailand. Some 80% of the startups in the first cohort were able to work with the bank, he says. RISE also helped the bank set up a corporate venture fund.
In addition to RISE, SeaX Ventures, a deep-tech venture capital fund founded by Parchariyanon, plays a crucial role in connecting startups across the region. With a focus on breakthrough technologies such as AI, biotech, robotics, and blockchain, SeaX Ventures helps scale high-impact innovations from Southeast Asia globally. .
Together, RISE and SeaX Ventures have built an innovation ecosystem with more than 20,000 startups, providing them with funding, strategic guidance, and access to corporate partners and global accelerators. “This dual approach—RISE driving corporate innovation and SeaX Ventures fueling deep-tech startups—positions the ecosystem as a key driver of technology adoption, corporate growth, and venture-backed innovation in Southeast Asia,” says Parchariyanon.
For now, RISE focuses mainly on Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. But it has bigger ambitions. Its mission is to drive 1% GDP for Southeast Asia through its corporate innovation platforms and reduce global carbon emissions by 1%, he says.
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