T hailand’s The Value Systems Co Ltd, a member of Singapore-based ECS Holdings Ltd, has expanded its business into Myanmar by setting up its first subsidiary in the Southeast Asian country in a bid to capitalise on emerging market opportunities.
Narong Intanate, executive chairman of The Value Systems, said the firm sees an opportunity in Myanmar since it has improved in many aspects including politics and administration. The US and EU have softened their economic and trade policies towards Myanmar in the past few years paving the way for Myanmar into the world economic stage.
He said Thailand is already considered a matured market and growth is decreasing by the year, while the unstable political situation also slowed down the firm’s business.
“This is one of the reasons why we have to explore and diversify into new territory such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar (CLM) that will bring us better business opportunities and growth,” Narong said.
He said Thailand’s IT market was worth $3.1 billion annually but had been facing slower growth, while in comparison, the IT markets in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are expected to continue growing by 16-20 percent in the coming years.
Narong said the firm’s subsidiary ECS Value Myanmar Services Co Ltd aims to focus on IT enterprise business in Myanmar.
“We may not be the first Thai IT company to set up a subsidiary in Myanmar, but we are the first IT Company in Myanmar focusing on enterprise business market.
“The markets for PCs and Notebooks are waning and Myanmar already has its own local agent in this business, so there would not be so much value added to the company if we share the PC and Notebook markets. However, the enterprise business is new with many ways opening up for it.”
He said the strongest point of Myanmar is that it has a large population of more than 60 million with low-cost, well-educated labour base, while the government also has policies to push forward more industrials and infrastructure development.
Narong said global IT giants such as VMware, HP Enterprise Group, Symantec, Microsoft, Cisco, F5, NetApp, EMC, Fujitsu, Citrix, and Buffalo have already appointed the firm as their distributor in Myanmar.
He said once the company was set up, it started developing local dealers so that they could get certified by the vendors and become specialised in enterprise business in terms of network system, data centre and security system.
“This has been our first priority because local dealers in the past did not have enough opportunities to attend a seminar or training on solutions. The Value Systems is the first company to hold a seminar together with vendors to give knowledge to local dealers since the company was not even set up yet.”
Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank also provides the firm a place to hold monthly seminars, he said. “Now there are local dealers certified by large vendors such as VMware and Cisco ready to deliver solutions services to organisation customers in Myanmar.”
Narong said Myanmar would generate at least 5 percent of the company’s sales revenue of $562.5 million this year.
“We expect Myanmar will contribute half our revenue outside Thailand in the long term. By 2020, we expect our revenue from abroad will exceed half our total revenue,” Narong said.
