Kasikorn X (KX), a company under Kasikornbank’s tech arm KBTG, has launched a new online marketplace for unique digital data known as non-fungible tokens (NFT) targeting Asian artists and brands, as well as art collectors from around the world.
With its Coral platform, KX aims to shift the power of decentralized finance, or DeFi, into the hands of the mass, as NFTs constitute a new opportunity for people to create new assets in the digital world.
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As a result, this can lead to the birth of a new world, new economic system, and new occupations in a future form of the Internet known as Metaverse.
Thailand’s NFT market has seen a triple-digit growth a year. However, the beauty of NFTs goes beyond its value and market growth. They also help to create new industries, allowing people to access good assets and own fine art works.
In fact, NFTs are not limited to arts and collectibles — businesses and brands may come up with a variety of creative applications.
Thanaarmates Arriyavat, head of Venture Builder at Kasikorn X, says KX has a mission to “build trust in a trustless world” by safely creating simple goods and services for large numbers of people.
Coral is an NFT platform that is easy to use for making purchases, sales and payments, he said.
The platform is designed for people with no prior knowledge of NFT. KX claims each NFT purchase can be made with no more than 10 clicks, or within five minutes.
Artists can offer their works for sale with three simple steps — uploading the digital file of their work, setting the price, and allowing the platform to “mint an NFT” from their art work.
“If you know how to sell things in social media, you can do the same on Coral,” Thanaarmates said.
He added that Coral allows participating artists an immediate access to millions of prospective buyers from around the world.
Buyers can make their payments with credit or debit cards and through mobile banking. Coral allows buyers to create their collections and display their NFTs in multiple ways, according to Thanaarmates.
Unlike other NFT platforms, Coral charges no upfront cost incurred from converting physical art works into digital files. Coral adopts the Lazy Minting concept, which means NFTs are minted only after their sales are completed.
Also, Coral tackles a typical pain for NFT collectors — the fact that they cannot be sure whether the items they bought are original. Under the Coral platform, collectors can be assured that all NFTs offered for sale here are genuine and in line with the international Ethereum standard.
The buyers own the rights to the NFTs that they purchase in three areas: DeFi digital wallet, copyright and trademark.
Coral’s target groups
Coral sets its sights on NFT collectors all over the world as well as artists and brands, particularly in Asia.
The platform has a future plan to accept payments with digital currencies, including the Coral currency on the Ethereum Chain. At present, cryptocurrencies are not accepted, and payments can be made with fiat money only.
“At Coral, artists and brands need to upload only their original art works. We want to inspire Thais to transform into artists, and we want to promote local artists,” Thanaarmates says.
Initially, Coral only allows NFT purchases for collection. In the next stage, owners can also offer their NFTs for sale on the platform.
Here, artists and brands can advertise, promote and sell their works of art to people around the world. In the next stage, they can also charge the royalty fee for the future commercial use of their NFTs.
Nine Thai artists have joined the Coral platform: Lactobacillus, Tikkywow, Songsin Tiewsomboon, Ekachai Milintapas, Puntita Meeboonsabai, Benzilla, Pomme Chan, IllustraTU, and Jiggy Bug.
Coral’s business allies are entitled to innovation, technology and a business model that involves co-creation and re-imagination for concrete results.
The heart of Coral is engagement between artists, their fans and brands, featuring online and off-line activities.
Siam Piwat is Coral’s first ally
Siam Piwat Group, which operates Bangkok luxury malls including Siam Paragon and Icon Siam, has agreed to serve as a connection between Coral and its network of artists.
Axel Winter, Siam Piwat’s chief digital officer, said the NFT platform serves as a new source for earning incomes through art works, as well as other products like games, songs, videos and books.
For him, this is a community for people who love digital arts. He added that understanding NFT can bring numerous benefits to consumers.
Coral is now open for business allies that are in the industries of retailing, entertainment, tourism and lifestyle, among others. Those interested may contact: coralworld.co or [email protected].
KBTG’s previous chapter
KX and Coral represent the “next chapter” of Kasikorn Business Technology Group (KBTG) while being the latest proud product of its “previous chapter”, says group chairman Ruangroj Poonpol.
Kasikorn X is an S-Curve venture builder established in 2018, creating Kubix as its first spin-off, KTech to oversee KBank’s operations in China, and Coral as its latest spin-off.
KBTG is a group of tech firms serving as the supporting technological platform for Kasikornbank, having spun off from the bank since 2016. It spent the first three years laying its foundation and the next three years (2019-2021) for transformation and growth during the “crisis of the century”.
KBTG, which is growing with synergy, has more than 2,000 employees who are collectively regarded as the group’s most important asset, according to Ruangroj.
The group has seen a strong growth, having executed technological modernization, doubled capability and efficiency, as well as expanding into the region.
“It started with KBTGSec, which takes care of strategy, people, branding and cyber security. Then, it was KInfra, which deals with scalable technological infrastructure and infrastructure as a service for all of KBTG’s companies and products,” the group chairman said.
“KBTG, in turn, supports KBank and its customers, overseeing the infrastructure that takes care of more than 4 billion financial transactions each year,” he added.
Next, it is KSoft, a company of best-in-class agile software development team, with more than 1,100 software developers taking care of over 400 mobile applications. Also, there is a team of leading software designers like Beacon Interface, which has KLabs responsible for deep tech research, making innovations and co-innovations, as well as dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) and data science.
KBTG creates technologies that empower KBank’s digital channels, particularly K Plus, which is a leading mobile banking app in Thailand and the Asia-Pacific region. Also, there are Line BK social banking service, which has more than 3.2 million customers, and KhunThong social chatbot, which boasts an online community of almost 1 million members.
Moreover, KBTG is credited for the digital lending technology on the K Plus app and its connection with allied ecosystems, contributing to a five-fold growth in the customer number.
“The essence of KBTG is 3Ss — Speed, Scale and Synergy. KBTG takes care of KBank operations in many countries,” Ruangroj concludes.
