Thailand's CEOs Push Bold Plan to Create 2,000 Unicorns

Thailand's business elite gathered this week with a message of hope: the country's economic struggles can become a launchpad for innovation.

At the CEO CONNEXT 2025 awards ceremony, Suphachai Chearavanont of CP Group received the CEO of the Year honor and presented a blueprint to pull Thailand out of its economic slump. His vision centers on courage, digital transformation, and betting big on young innovators.

The numbers tell a sobering story. Thailand currently has just 2,000 startups compared to Singapore's 50,000. But Suphachai sees this gap as an opportunity, not a defeat.

His proposal is remarkably simple: provide seed funding to 200,000 university student teams across the country. Even if only one percent become unicorn companies valued at over a billion dollars, Thailand would gain 2,000 major innovators reshaping the economy.

The strategy extends beyond startups. Suphachai outlined four pillars for growth: connecting Thailand with Malaysia and Singapore to leverage their combined $1.6 trillion economy, digitizing informal businesses to expand the tax base, attracting seven million skilled workers, and establishing the country as a regional hub for data centers and artificial intelligence.

Shine Bunnag, CEO of The Nation Group which organized the event, acknowledged the pessimism clouding business sentiment. Concerns about being stuck in old industries and potentially falling behind Vietnam's GDP have created what he called a "hibernating bear" mentality where companies fear investing.

Yet Bunnag expressed confidence in Thai businesses. "Thai private enterprises have a high capability to survive in any situation," he said, noting that the event itself creates networks where leaders can collaborate on solutions.

Why This Inspires

This gathering represents a fundamental shift in how Thailand's business community views crisis. Rather than retreating during economic uncertainty, these leaders are proposing the largest bet on young talent in the country's history. The seed funding initiative would touch nearly every university in Thailand, democratizing access to entrepreneurship and potentially discovering innovators from unexpected places.

The ceremony also honored four other exceptional CEOs leading change in sustainability, innovation, banking, and digital currency, showing that transformation is already underway across sectors.

"Thailand definitely has a future," Suphachai told his fellow executives in closing.