Ensogo CEO Tom Srivorakul grew up in California and attended the prestigious University of California Los Angeles, but he wanted to bring innovation back to his home country of Thailand.
So he moved back to Bangkok about nine years ago and began a remarkable run of setting up successful internet companies with his brothers.
In 2004, they founded New Media, Thailand’s first digital agency, and then went on to found Admax Network, one of the biggest ad networks in Southeast Asia and Facebook’s local partner since April 2011.
In 2009, they used their expertise in marketing and surveying to launch Ensogo, a daily deal site similar to Groupon which was blowing up in the US at the time. “We surveyed 4,000 people and asked if they would pre-purchase a deal in order to redeem later, if it was available at a tremendous value. A large percentage said ‘yes’,” says Tom.
The rest is history. Ensogo has grew massively from the day it was launched and was bought by US deals giant LivingSocial in July 2011. The deal is still in the quiet period, but LivingSocial is rumored to have paid in the tens of millions of dollars for Ensogo.
Ensogo in Thailand today has almost one million members, gets 9.2 million unique visitors a month, and has a market share of 89 percent. It’s also expanded to the Philippines, where it is the market leader, and Indonesia through local subsidiary DealKeren (since rebranded to LivingSocial Indonesia).
Tom’s 2012 goals for Ensogo include maintaing their market share in Thailand and expanding beyond 3 million users around Southeast Asia. He also wants to increase partnerships with local vendors from 2,000 last year and work more closely with banks, mobile operators, and credit card companies to facilitate deal payment. Another goal is to integrate hotel booking and restaurant reservation systems into the site, as hotel and restaurant deals are some of its most important and popular .
Coconuts Bangkok spoke with Tom to ask a few Bangkok-specific questions about Ensogo’s business.
CB: Why did you choose to put your headquarters in Bangkok?
TS: Bangkok has always been our launchpad for our other businesses. Me and my brothers call this our home. We’re dual citizens. We’re here in Thailand and we know this market like the back of our hand.If you look in the office, all of our IT and development staff for the region are based here.
CB: How does IT and development talent in Bangkok compare to the rest of the world?
TS: Obviously, skill set wise everyone knows that India and Russia are very good at IT and development. Vietnam is coming up as a more cost-effective place. But there is a lot of talent in Thailand. If you look at the culture in Thailand, the artistic nature of this culture. The temples, the art. There’s a lot of great creativity as a skill set here. We could have gone to Russia or India yes, but my brothers and I came to Thailand for a reason over nine years ago. And that was to bring innovation to our country a bit. Back then nothing was being done online, there was no standarization. Back then on the Thai sites, there were 117 banner sizes last time we counted. So we kind of brought standardization. Better tracking. Just a better way of doing things online in Thailand. We’re all about trying to emulate the Silicon Valley effect in Thailand. Because there are a lot of really amazing entrepreneurs here. The market itself is just ripe. You look at internet penetration and device usage… It’s growing and booming. Social media usage here is crazy. If I was an investor these would be clear indicators to come in.
CB: How are Bangkok Ensogo users different than those around the country? Are there any deals that have been the most popular with Bangkokians?
TS: Bangkok being the capital and the center of commerce has a lot of jobs. So essentially, you’re going to have a more affluent consumer demographic in Bangkok. Most of the credit cards are held here. Most of the consumption and spending is here in Bangkok. About deals that really do well for us here – if you look at the number of health and beauty clinics in Bangkok per capita it’s just massive. They’re here for a reason. There’s a lot of focus on beauty and appearance… and brand. Retail brands do really well here. A lot of our deals and offers are centered around that here. We make it a point to cater to the demands of our members. We do surveys religiously to find out what the trends are, what people want.
Parts of this story originally appeared in Asia tech blog Tech in Asia.
