Planning Internet Cafe

[Mark]

I am planning to start an internet cafe in Thailand. To calculate if my investment in this business will leave me some money I need some advise if the figures I am using are realistic.

I think about a setting of something like 30 computers. The shop has to be open 18 hrs in the day (6.00 a.m. till 24.00 hrs), 7 days in the week. I expect each computer averaged to be used 5 hours in the day.

Does anyone have an internet cafe already and are you willing to tell me how many hours one computer (told from your experience) is probably being used in a day.

Other examples from real experiences are very welcome. Any suggestions I am looking forward to read.

Mark

[mouse]

Mark My wife has an Internet Café. My questions for you are: Where do you plan to set up? Who will be your main user - Thai, Tourist or a Mix? What do you plan to charge per hour? What will you offer other than email and the Net itself? Who will be your provider? What will be your speed? When you provide your response then I can tell you my advice on my wife's experience.

[randyksf]

You need to say a location. Also what is your target group?

What is the competition in the area? Do you plan to offer other things such as FedEx pickup, copy service, Coffee Bar etc......

Talk to Sunbelt Asia or indo sam on the board they can tell you about setting up a company here in BKK.

[terdsak_12]

I think it's been done to death, any good location would already have a cafe or 2 already, also you'll be paying higher rent for a better location.

Give me half your money and I'll give you half of it back after 6 months, that way you'll be better off.

[sirusman]

I own 2 internet cafe in Pattaya ,and it is done to death as memebrs have said. I am looking to get out as soon as possible.

[Guest IT Manager]

Well Turdsack thanks for that. What an illuminating addition to the thread.

The area is important, from the perspective of the services you aim to provide. What is the target demographic? Toursists, school kids etc.

If you are supporting the needs of tourists and aim to provide hi-end support like Fedex etc., good, you can aim higher.

5 hours per day at (say) 15 baht is about 75 baht per day per machine.

Kids can't be out after 10, so that may lower things a tad. Near a university is good.

30 machines x 75 = enough?

It's your question.

What is the market like? How many others have done it etc.?

[johng]

My girlfriend has a small internet cafe in Pattaya (Soi Yensabai) just 5 computers. Most of her customers are school kids wanting to play Ragnarok, other than that she has bargirls come to write emails to their "darklings" and helps them write those emails, this is where most of her money is made.

The charge for playing games is 20 baht per hour.

Internet was 1 baht per minute

but now due to competition it is down to 40 baht per hour.

(now she has someone open an internet cafe right next door to her)

ADSL is still not available all over Pattaya and even where it is available the cost is astranomical ..so she still uses a 56k modem.

Today as it is half term for many schools around here she took just over 1000 baht... thats a good day, she opened the cafe from 10 am till 10 pm .To break even she needs to take 466 baht a day.

Good luck.

[bmanly]

I use internet everyday. I can get ADSL internet for 30 baht an hour and I never pay more. I find that some charge 2 baht a minute and their shops are empty, those that charge 30 baht an hour do well. It is not just the per hour rate either, I think they make fair bit on copying CD's, faxes and other extras. Plus when the bar girls come in and can't read and write their own emails they charge extra for that too. If you are not prepared to have a fast connection and not be prepared for fair pricing your shop could be empty. My location Pattaya, the shop I use is in soi Buakhou behind the new family mart.

johng, how come this shop can get ADSL? . I have verified it's speed as I download large files and can see the speed it downloads at. Is it in fact ADSL or how else can it be so fast? Just wondering

[Guest IT Manager]

As Johng said, it isn't available everywhere, and I don't restrict that to just Pattaya. Even in CM, where the cables are rolled out all over the place, it isn't available all over the place.

ONe of the problems experienced by members on the forum and written about frequently, is that the engineers behind the system have a good idea how to drive it, the problem occurs at the actual connection when someone with a roll of tape and a pair of pliers, hooks you in, and wonders why "is not so fast here".

For my way of thinking, I will wait until someone realises that decent phones are a community service that everyone should be able to access, which should occur about the same time as the 80 catenary twins disappear of the telegraph pole in front of my house, to be replaced by 100 pair trunk cables.

I'm not holding my breath.

Worst comes to worst, use IpSTAR for the first 12 months. Will certainly manage the numbers of PC's you are discussing.

[Zendesigner]

first of all do your numbers.

You can find a really good business plan and financial spreadsheet here.

planmagic

Then you have an idea at least of cost , turnover estimate ect...

i calculated it once, it's doable provided you are willing to trow away your investment in the pc's.

30 pc at a minimum of 10.000 bath is 300.000 bath

some interior , networking , chairs tables ect. 50.000 bath.

30 pc's lets say you are really well filled up every day 75% full most of the time

gives you 22.5 pc's busy at 30 bath an hour this is 675 bath hour * 12 hours is 8100 bath a day.

SO it is doable but in the end it will take a loooongg time before you even got your investment back.

More likely your occupation rate will be much lower.

YOu are actually just asking how do i plan a business??

SO use a plan tool..

[monty]

Bmanly,

The shop your using in Soi Buakhao uses IPTV, thats why you get the pretty decent downloads! It only needs a regular phoneline for the uplink, downloads come in through a UBC sized sattelite dish. Works well, only for an internet cafe it might be difficult to predict your costs, since you'll pay 250 Baht for each 100Mb of data down/uploaded!

[mouse]

first of all do your numbers.

You can find a really good business plan and financial spreadsheet here.

planmagic

Unfortunately the people at planmagic did not follow their business plan for when I try to access their site I get

Gateway Timeout

The following error occurred:

A gateway timeout occurred. The server is unreachable. Retry the request. (GATEWAY_TIMEOUT)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please contact the administrator.

So here is the lesson, make a plan, stick to it, revise it as often as necessary and don't rely on other to do your homework for you, then you might have a chance.

Next comment: Why does everyone want to do the same thing and be an Internet Café owner. This country is dying for new ideas to be tried out.

[bmanly]

The shop your using in Soi Buakhao uses IPTV, thats why you get the pretty decent downloads! It only needs a regular phoneline for the uplink, downloads come in through a UBC sized sattelite dish. Works well, only for an internet cafe it might be difficult to predict your costs, since you'll pay 250 Baht for each 100Mb of data down/uploaded!

Sorry, what is IPTV? 250 B for 100 mb? Let me think, I probably download 2 x 500 kb files a day so in 100 days I use 100 mb.

So if I spend 1 hour a day at 30 baht a day in 100 days I would have paid out 3,000 baht to the shop keeper. They still make a good profit out of me. They must hate the people who come in and download music hey.

Mark another thing, ok Pattaya has a lot of internet shops so it's probably a bad comparison, but it's service that counts too. Some shops have crappy ergonomics with the desks and chairs, hurts my neck looking up and wobbly chairs for my back. Then I went into one place and the woman wouldn't turn on the aircon, so I never went back. Then some won't even give you a glass of cold water. The shop I mention above does all that and they are very busy and nice people to deal with. Think of what would make people come back too, repeat customers are best, they just keep coming back as I do.

[mouse]

Sorry, what is IPTV? 250 B for 100 mb? Let me think, I probably download 2 x 500 kb files a day so in 100 days I use 100 mb.

Be carful with those numbers. My wife has 5 computers only and they are basically used for games. I see up/download of 100MB a day from those 5 machines alone.

[Guest IT Manager]

I agree Mouse. We found in our first month with Ipstar that the traffic (it goes both ways remember), was over 100Mb per day between 12 machines initially.

We now run a constant 6Gb per month

[mouse]

What I hate to see is ten kids on one machine. New rule as of today 'ONE KID, ONE COMPUTER" now to sell that idea to my wife and make her understand why.

[Zendesigner]

mouse,

you probably are on csloxinfo and they have a problem with their proxy cache again.

See another thread somewhere in this forum department about geocities.com

I can assure you it's great software for a low price. I don't own the site but a friend of mine does.

I don't get any compensation for this just wanted to make things more easy.

Problem will probably resolved hopefully sometime soon.

[organic]

I used to have IPTV for my internet cafe on Samui and found their service poor. Often enough it ran just as fast on dial-up only (and I ran a traceroute on several occasions to prove it wasn't just mu imagination). I complained frequently to CS who suggested various solutions that made not a jot of difference. Eventually 1 of their engineers put me through to their customer services people. First thing she came out with was the classic, 'no-one else has complained about it'! When that and several other excuses cut no ice she eventually admitted the service was over-subscribed. I've heard they've improved with having their own satellite now, but a mate down in Ao Nang still has serious speed problems with them.

Also don't forget that satellite services don't work when there's heavy cloud or rain.

[monty]

Hi organic,

I have th IPTV system installed for 5 months now, and up until now it delivers 95% as advertised. Download speeds are always within 90% of the maximum 256 kbps. It's a fact that inherrent to sattelite systems, there will always be a small latency( looks light a small hesitation before the actual downloading starts).

I do recall that about 4 months ago they changed transponders (on the same sattelite though) to increase capacity...

If your friend still has problems, he should have the system checked out, it works perfect for me at the moment...

Cheers,

Monty