How Few Industry Codes Hold Half of Thailand's Companies 2026
In short
Forty five industry codes already hold half of Thailand's classified companies. That is just 3.7 percent of the country's 1,228 five digit codes. The cumulative share is 50.26 percent of the 1,986,709 companies with a code, as of 7 July 2026. Round the cutoff to an even 50 codes and the top slice covers 52.70 percent. One single code alone holds 165,550 companies, 8.33 percent of the registry by itself. Meanwhile 485 codes, nearly 40 percent of all codes, hold 100 companies or fewer each. Thailand's business registry looks less like a level field and more like a steep pyramid.
How many industry codes does it take to reach half of all companies?
Forty five codes. That is the answer once every one of Thailand's 1,228 five digit TSIC codes in market_tsic_insight is ranked from busiest to smallest and the entity counts are added up one code at a time (DBD, 2026). By the 45th code the running total reaches 998,512 companies. That total is 50.26 percent of the 1,986,709 companies carrying a classified industry code as of 7 July 2026. One code earlier, at rank 44, the cumulative share sits at 49.75 percent, still short of half. Round the cutoff up to an even 50 codes and the same top slice covers 52.70 percent of the field. Either way the finding holds. A group smaller than 4 percent of all possible five digit classifications carries the other half of the country's registered business.
The cumulative concentration curve
Figures in percent of classified companies.
The curve bends hard across the first fifty codes then flattens for the remaining twelve hundred.
The crossover, code by code
| Rank | TSIC code | Companies in this code | Cumulative companies | Cumulative share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | 45201 | 10,607 | 946,537 | 47.64% |
| 41 | 47219 | 10,574 | 957,111 | 48.18% |
| 42 | 46691 | 10,526 | 967,637 | 48.71% |
| 43 | 71101 | 10,365 | 978,002 | 49.23% |
| 44 | 79120 | 10,312 | 988,314 | 49.75% |
| 45 | 47612 | 10,198 | 998,512 | 50.26% |
| 46 | 46510 | 10,010 | 1,008,522 | 50.76% |
| 47 | 45101 | 10,006 | 1,018,528 | 51.27% |
| 48 | 47411 | 9,769 | 1,028,297 | 51.76% |
| 49 | 43909 | 9,675 | 1,037,972 | 52.25% |
| 50 | 42101 | 9,100 | 1,047,072 | 52.70% |
Ranking Thailand's five digit TSIC codes by entity count and tracking the cumulative share, as of 7 Jul 2026.
Why this matters
A registry with 1,228 possible activity codes sounds diffuse until you rank it by size. Half of Thailand's classified companies sit inside just 45 of those codes. The single busiest code alone carries 165,550 companies, 8.33 percent of the whole classified base. At the other end of the same list, 485 codes hold 100 companies or fewer. That is close to 40 percent of the total. A further 47 codes hold exactly one company each. A bank scoring sector risk, a franchise picking where to expand, or a regulator drafting a rule that applies at the five digit level is really writing policy for a short list of high volume activities, not for 1,228 evenly sized categories. Treating every TSIC code as equally weighted would badly misread how concentrated Thai company formation actually is.
Definitions
- Five digit TSIC code
- The most granular level of Thailand's Standard Industrial Classification, used by the DBD to record each company's declared business activity.
- Entity count
- The number of registered companies recorded under a given TSIC code in the registry.
- Cumulative share
- The running total of entity count for the top N codes, divided by the total entity count across all codes, expressed as a percent.
- Classified company
- A company in the registry that has been assigned a five digit TSIC code. Not every registered company carries one.
- Concentration
- How unevenly a total is distributed across categories. High concentration means a small number of categories hold most of the total.
Assumptions
- Only the 1,986,709 companies carrying a five digit TSIC code in market_tsic_insight are counted, out of 1,989,709 total registered companies, so about 3,000 uncoded companies are excluded from every share in this page.
- The hhi and cr5 columns on market_tsic_insight are null for all rows and were deliberately not used. Every share here is recomputed directly from entity_count.
- Five digit code names are not available in the source data, so codes are reported by number only rather than by industry label.
Methodology
Every one of the 1,228 rows in market_tsic_insight, sourced from the Department of Business Development registry with computed_at 2026-07-07, was ranked by entity_count from largest to smallest. A running cumulative sum and cumulative share of the 1,986,709 total classified companies was computed row by row to find the first rank where the cumulative share passed 50 percent. Codes with a null or zero entity count were retained in the ranking but naturally fall at the bottom. The hhi and cr5 columns on this table are null for every row and were not used anywhere in this calculation. Five digit industry names are not published by the source table, so codes are identified by number only.
How we verified this
- Summed entity_count across all 1,228 rows of market_tsic_insight and got 1,986,709, the denominator used for every share in this page.
- Ranked codes by entity_count descending with a running cumulative sum. Cumulative share first passed 50 percent at rank 45, cumulative sum 998,512, and 998512 divided by 1986709 equals 50.26 percent. Rank 44 cumulative sum was 988,314, which is 49.75 percent, confirming rank 45 is the true tipping point and not rank 44.
- Recomputed the round number version separately. The top 50 codes sum to 1,047,072 entities, and 1047072 divided by 1986709 equals 52.70 percent. Fifty codes out of 1,228 total codes equals 4.07 percent, consistent with the roughly 4 percent figure used in the headline.
- Confirmed the single top code holds 165,550 entities, and 165550 divided by 1986709 equals 8.33 percent.
- Counted 485 codes with entity_count of 100 or fewer, 485 divided by 1228 equals 39.50 percent, and separately confirmed hhi and cr5 are null on all 1,228 rows so no concentration column was touched in this calculation.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons by industry classification (TSIC). Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- National Statistical Office, Thailand. (2009). Thailand Standard Industrial Classification (TSIC-2009). https://www.thai-german-cooperation.info/download/20140522_eedp_04_tsic.pdf
Frequently asked questions
How many industry codes does it take to reach half of all Thai companies?
Forty five, out of 1,228 five digit TSIC codes. The cumulative share first crosses 50 percent at exactly rank 45, reaching 50.26 percent. A round 50 codes covers 52.70 percent.
Is company registration spread evenly across industry codes?
No. One single code alone accounts for 8.33 percent of all classified companies. At the other extreme, 485 codes each hold 100 companies or fewer, almost 40 percent of the total.
Why not use the hhi or cr5 columns to measure this concentration?
Those two columns are null on every row of market_tsic_insight, so this page recomputes the concentration directly from entity_count instead of relying on them.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). How Few Industry Codes Hold Half of Thailand's Companies 2026. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/how-few-industry-codes-hold-half-of-thai-companies-2026
Data & corrections
Download the data (CSV)Spot something off, or want to ask about the data? Email insights@maxsolutions.co.th. We publish corrections.
Written by
Chatpong L.Founder, Max Data, Max Solutions Co., Ltd.
Chatpong L. leads Max Data, a company-intelligence platform built on Thailand's official business registry. He writes about the structure of the Thai economy using primary registry data. His work covers company formation, industry concentration, and regional business activity.
Related insights
This page reports company-level and aggregate statistics only. It names no individuals and makes no claims about any person. Figures are provided for information and may be revised as source data updates.