RISE Corporate Innovation Powerhouse raises USD 8 million
RISE is looking to supercharge a tech-enabled corporate innovation platform to scale its service exponentially to help corporates, large family businesses, and government sectors region-wide to succeed in executing innovation.
RISE is a leading corporate innovation powerhouse based out of Southeast Asia with the bold
mission to lift up 1 percent of GDP for Southeast Asia. RISE has been working closely with leading
corporates and government agencies across the region to assist them to becoming more innovative and successful in the fast-paced future through its unique corporate accelerator, intrapreneur university, venture building services, and experiential conference.
Earlier this April, RISE announced that it has raised USD 8 million in Seed funding which is
considered as one of the largest Seed rounds in Southeast Asia. The lead investors include Metro
Company Limited, D2C Inc. (Japan), Chanwanich Company Limited, among others.
RISE will be using the fresh funds to supercharge its tech-enabled corporate innovation platform
that will enable RISE to scale its services exponentially beyond Thailand to Singapore, Indonesia,
and Malaysia, to assist corporations in these countries in transforming their businesses through
innovation.
“We are a Southeast-Asian-born company with a global vision to disrupt corporates’ R&D and
training landscape with the market size of USD 50 billion by leveraging from our success rooted
in Thailand and localize our service portfolios to each market’s needs,” said Dr. Kid
Parchariyanon, CEO and Co-founder of RISE.
Launched in 2016, RISE has been growing rapidly and aggressively. It is now hitting USD 1 billion
in impact through the effort of executing corporate innovation across the region by creating the
global ecosystem for corporate innovation, with a network of more than 400 corporations,
2,000 startups, and over 20,000 corporate innovators across the globe.
“The past year has been an important step for Metro Company Limited. We have over 60
companies in various industries, including digital industry, foods, real estates, construction
materials, and other investments. As such, digital transformation is an important step for our
company group. We see RISE supporting us in driving our internal innovation faster and stronger
by uncovering our new S-curve, exploring our business growth potential, through its global network
of innovation and experiences in transforming many leading organizations in Southeast Asia,”
said Mrs. Wantana Thongthai, Chairman of the Board, Metro Company Limited, a long-established company with over 50 years of history in Thailand which owns 3 stock-exchange listed companies.
“For us, speed is the winning key in the game of innovation. With the global network of RISE,
we strongly trust that RISE is able to connect best-in-class tech startups via its Global Accelerator
program to collaborate with our internal team in order to accelerate our innovation,”
added Ms. Keibun Go, Global Business Alliance Head of D2C Inc., a digital advertising and
marketing company established as a joint enterprise between Japan's largest telecommunications
company NTT DOCOMO Inc. and Japan's largest advertising agency, Dentsu Group Inc.
Besides earning trust and support from the private sector, RISE is the first Thai company to have
received the financial grants from government agencies of three countries - Thailand’s Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa), Enterprise Singapore (ESG), and Malaysia Digital Economy
Corporation (MDEC) to support its activities since 2019.
“Collaboration, not competition, has always been our philosophy. We believe the collaboration
between corporates, startups, and the governments will be the driving force of the innovations in
Southeast Asia,” concluded Dr. Kid.
