Jaytiya Ngammaykin has been heading the strategic investment initiatives for financial services firm Siam Commercial Bank (SCB)’s corporate venture capital (CVC) arm, SCB Digital Ventures, since April 2018 where she focuses on China-based deals.
Prior to her investment profession, Ngammaykin managed Digital Ventures’ accelerator program where she set up the scheme from scratch.
Ngammaykin said: “It was early last year that I got the opportunity to form a new CVC fund for Digital Ventures with the objective to invest in China in order to gain first-hand knowledge into fintech and disruptive technologies and create linkage back to SCB.
“The fund size is $50m to invest purely in China. This is something very new for Thai CVCs as we are the first to set up a pure China fund. Our area of focus includes fintech, deep tech, consumer and industrial transformation. We started off with a fund investment to get to know the market, to get the access to deal pipelines, and to network with the fund managers and entrepreneurs. We also tried to leverage the resources of SCB in China as SCB has offices in Shanghai and Beijing. We are working closely with those teams to have people on the ground with the local network.
“As a CVC arm, it is also essential to work closely with various business units (BUs) at SCB headquarters. To deliver strategic value to the bank after the investment, we start collecting requirements and pain points from the management and BUs, search for the technological solutions offered by companies in our portfolios, connect all related parties, and drive the engagement until reaching tangible results and outcome.”
Ngammaykin holds an MBA from Hult International Business School and a bachelor of business administration from Thammasat University. She said: “Before joining Digital Ventures, I was working in an investment banking firm and management consulting firm. And it is from the personal experience in founding a small business in Shanghai and exited before I came back to Bangkok that attracted me to the tech startup ecosystem. That is how I started my career in this field.”
