Amity, a local tech startup specialising in the provision of social features for applications, aims to pursue Series C fundraising to drive its market expansion next year following an increase in demand for software development kits (SDK) to support social community features.
The business-to-business (B2B)-based firm became the first Thai independent software vendor to be listed on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) Marketplace in August.
"We are gearing up to expand to more B2B customers for growth during this time while we still have fewer rivals. The overall market continues to grow, particularly in the US and Europe," said Korawad Chearavanont, chief executive of Amity.
Mr Korawad is the son of Suphachai Chearavanont, chief executive of conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP).
He said the company plans to tap Series C funding next year for greater market expansion, and aims to become a globally successful Thai software firm.
Mr Korawad said the company is focusing on its flagship product, Amity Social Cloud SDK, which will let brands have social features in their apps to build social communities, thereby supporting customer engagement.
According to him, app developers often use SDKs, fitted with software tools, resource libraries and programs that integrate with third-party application programming interfaces. Brands are seen as boosting their speed to market by integrating with community SDKs.
Mr Korawad said the firm is expected to see a boost in its credentials with its AWS Marketplace listing, and thus thrive in the global market more rapidly.
He said there are not many startups in Asean that focus on the B2B market. B2B startups are seeing a gross profit margin of 60-70% as they increasingly spend less on customer acquisition.
Amity has more than 200 employees in its offices in Bangkok, London, Milan and Miami. It has been named among the fastest growing companies in Europe, and is in the top 150 of the Financial Times FT 1000 list.
Stanley Chan, head of technology partners for AWS in Asia-Pacific, said the AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalogue that makes it easy for organisations to discover, procure, entitle, provision, and govern third-party software.
Being listed in this marketplace provides access to millions of customers from Amity Social Cloud.
Citing global market research firm Forrester, Mr Chan said 17% of global B2B spending of US$13 trillion is expected to flow to marketplaces by 2023.
Marketplaces are expected to be a dominant channel for the procurement of infrastructure operations software by 2024, according to global research firm Gartner.
Software spending is expected to grow by 9.8% to $674.9 billion in 2022, Gartner said.
