New entrepreneurs often spring from the personal application required to win a hi-tech competition. Natjira Honda, the 25-year-old Thai-Japanese general manager of Prompt Now, is proof of that.

In 2001, when he was a senior student of computer science at Chulalongkorn University, Natjira and his friends took part in the National Software Contest arranged by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec). They won the category for students.

That win was his first inspiration, pushing him to direct his abilities towards business. Two years later, when he was studying for his master's degree in computer science at Chulalongkorn, Natjira set up Prompt Now, his own company. With registered capital of only Bt1 million, he set out to focus on game development, including mobile games. In the process, the company also developed its own game engine, called the PN Engine, which has helped it to develop many games over a short period.

In the company's first year of operations, 20 of Natjira's games, including puzzles and action, simulation and adventure games, succeeded in both winning awards and gaining wider recognition among mobile gamers in the EU countries, Singapore and Thailand.

With his team's solid competency in mobile-game development, Prompt Now won a Java Game Top Ten Award in a competition staged by Sony-Ericsson in Sweden. His mobile games were then selected by Sony-Ericsson to sell along with its handsets in many European countries.

However, while successful in their chosen field, Natjira and his friends were less successful at business and at sustaining income. So he took the company to the Software Park, Thailand, as a second-generation "incubatee" in the park's Incubation Centre.

"We were keen on game development, particularly on mobile platforms, but we lacked business sense. Joining the Incubation Centre at Software Park helped us a lot in understanding more about business," Natjira says.

Natjira and his friends learned enough to develop a solid business plan, and this attracted investment from Modernform Enterprise Computing (MFEC), a Thai company that was looking for potential mobile-game developers to strengthen its business portfolio. The company's registered capital was raised to Bt7.5 million, with MFEC holding a 60-per-cent stake.

Natjira says his company gained much more than money when it joined MFEC: importantly, it gained knowledge of business management.

Prompt Now has so far developed 120 game titles for mobile gamers. It also developed games based on the BREW platform provided for Hutch users in Thailand and China. Natjira won the BREW Developer Award, hosted by Hutchison and Calcom, in 2005. But the limitations of technology for developing mobile games led the company to branch out in 2005 into games for both personal computers and the online community.

Later this year, Prompt Now aims to launch its first commercial PC game on the market. It will allow single players to play alone on a PC, to play online with friends or to play with others via mobile phones. It is therefore designed to play across all platforms at the same time.

"Additionally, we are going to open a game-portal site in Japan, because we've got a licence to sell our PC games there," Natjira says. "We've also joined with KDDI, DoCoMo and Soft Bank Mobile to sell our mobile games to Japanese mobile gamers by subscription. It is a revenue-sharing deal with the Japanese operators."

The company's total revenue is expected to reach Bt20 million this year, and about 20 per cent of that is expected from the Japanese market.

Prompt Now has also launched a game portal on the Thai market. It is called Gameyuppies.com and offers about 120 Java-based game titles developed by the company as well as another 300 supplied by overseas partners. The portal site generated 700,000 downloads last year, each of them earning between Bt40 and Bt60. This year Gameyuppies.com is hoping for 800,000 transactions.

Natjira's dream is to list Prompt Now on Thailand's Market for Alternative Investments within three to five years, and he feels sure the dream will come true - all because a students' competition sparked the inspiration to create a solid, high-growth business.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation