40 Thai Industry Codes With Zero Large Companies in 2026
In short
Forty Thai industry codes with at least 500 registered companies apiece have never produced a single large company, together holding 51,740 firms. That is 9.7 percent of the 413 industry codes large enough to expect a giant. Wholesale and retail trade and accommodation and food service contribute five such codes each, more than any other sector. Micro enterprises make up 81.8 percent of these firms, well above the national average of 75.1 percent.
Which Thai industry codes have never grown a large company?
Forty five digit industry codes in Thailand each hold at least 500 registered companies, and not one of them has ever produced a company large enough to sit in DBD's large size band (DBD, 2026). Together these codes account for 51,740 firms, 9.7 percent of the 413 codes with enough companies to statistically expect a giant. The pattern concentrates hard at the top. A transportation and storage code, 49321, alone holds 5,227 companies, the single biggest on the list. An administrative and support code follows with 3,745, then a professional, scientific and technical code with 2,796. The top five codes together hold 31.1 percent of the group's 51,740 firms. Wholesale and retail trade and accommodation and food service each contribute five of the forty codes, more than any other industry section. Two sections never appear on the list at all, financial and insurance, and real estate. Every large Thai company sits somewhere, just never in these forty codes.
The 15 biggest industry codes with zero large companies
- 49321: Transportation and storage5,227
- 81300: Administrative and support3,745
- 74200: Professional, scientific and technical2,796
- 85491: Education2,344
- 47691: Wholesale and retail trade2,000
- 96201: Other services1,810
- 18121: Manufacturing1,799
- 08103: Mining and quarrying1,539
- 55109: Accommodation and food service1,535
- 86203: Human health and social work1,518
- 47522: Wholesale and retail trade1,452
- 85410: Education1,436
- 63120: Information and communication1,392
- 43303: Construction1,364
- 95110: Other services1,317
Figures in registered companies.
Transportation and storage code 49321 dwarfs every other code on the list, at nearly four times the fifteenth ranked code.
Top 20 industry codes with no large company
| TSIC code | Industry section | Companies | Active | Micro | Small | Medium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49321 | Transportation and storage | 5,227 | 349 | 5,078 | 146 | 3 |
| 81300 | Administrative and support | 3,745 | 1,874 | 2,802 | 926 | 17 |
| 74200 | Professional, scientific and technical | 2,796 | 1,073 | 2,437 | 357 | 2 |
| 85491 | Education | 2,344 | 1,113 | 1,961 | 377 | 6 |
| 47691 | Wholesale and retail trade | 2,000 | 703 | 1,675 | 318 | 7 |
| 96201 | Other services | 1,810 | 905 | 1,403 | 394 | 13 |
| 18121 | Manufacturing | 1,799 | 567 | 1,412 | 372 | 15 |
| 08103 | Mining and quarrying | 1,539 | 628 | 1,171 | 349 | 19 |
| 55109 | Accommodation and food service | 1,535 | 828 | 1,285 | 247 | 3 |
| 86203 | Human health and social work | 1,518 | 1,247 | 576 | 925 | 17 |
| 47522 | Wholesale and retail trade | 1,452 | 443 | 1,083 | 343 | 26 |
| 85410 | Education | 1,436 | 1,429 | 1,135 | 300 | 1 |
| 63120 | Information and communication | 1,392 | 79 | 1,375 | 17 | 0 |
| 43303 | Construction | 1,364 | 357 | 1,111 | 248 | 5 |
| 95110 | Other services | 1,317 | 487 | 1,092 | 218 | 7 |
| 55102 | Accommodation and food service | 1,235 | 557 | 1,080 | 152 | 3 |
| 74901 | Professional, scientific and technical | 1,162 | 561 | 1,010 | 152 | 0 |
| 71202 | Professional, scientific and technical | 1,157 | 863 | 1,057 | 97 | 3 |
| 56210 | Accommodation and food service | 1,098 | 758 | 872 | 224 | 2 |
| 55909 | Accommodation and food service | 1,082 | 666 | 769 | 306 | 7 |
Ranked by company count, as of 7 Jul 2026. All 40 codes are in the downloadable CSV.
A structural signal, not a data gap
A code with 500 or more companies and zero large companies is not simply small, it is capped. National researchers call a version of this pattern the missing middle, where firms cluster at the smallest scale and struggle to cross into the next tier (Abreha et al., 2023). The OECD puts small and medium enterprises at 99.5 percent of all Thai enterprises nationally (OECD, 2026). The registry's own large company share of 0.7 percent implies a close 99.3 percent for everyone else. What is different about these forty codes is that the ceiling is total rather than thin. Wholesale and retail trade and accommodation and food service, two of the most crowded parts of the economy, supply five zero large codes each. Financial and insurance and real estate, the sectors that concentrate capital fastest, supply none. For founders and investors scanning where to build, these forty codes mark where scale has not happened yet, whether from market structure, regulation, or plain lack of capital.
Definitions
- TSIC code
- The five digit Thai Standard Industrial Classification code DBD assigns to each registered company, the finest level of industry detail this registry publishes.
- Industry section
- One of 21 lettered top level groups, such as G for wholesale and retail trade, that every TSIC code rolls up into.
- Size band
- DBD's four tier classification of a company as micro, small, medium or large, based on its most recently filed financial scale.
- Large company
- A company placed in DBD's largest size band, the top scale tier a Thai registered company can reach.
- Sizeable code
- In this analysis, a TSIC code with 500 or more registered companies, the cutoff used to exclude tiny codes where a zero large count would not be meaningful.
- Missing middle
- A pattern noted in development economics where firms cluster at the smallest scale and relatively few grow into the medium or large tier.
Assumptions
- The 500 company threshold marking a sizeable TSIC code is a cutoff chosen for this analysis, not an official DBD category.
- Size band reflects each company's latest filed financial statement, so a company that recently crossed into the large band may not yet show if it has not filed.
- A zero large count is a snapshot as of 7 Jul 2026 and can change if any single company in that code grows or refiles.
Methodology
Figures come from the DBD company registry aggregated by five digit TSIC code in the market_tsic_insight table, as of 7 Jul 2026. A code counts as sizeable if it has 500 or more registered companies, a threshold chosen to exclude tiny codes where a zero large count would not be meaningful. A code counts as having no large company if its DBD size band tally for large equals zero. Size bands, micro, small, medium and large, are assigned by DBD to companies based on their most recently filed financial scale. Industry section names follow the 21 lettered ISIC style groups DBD publishes. Five digit code names are not published by DBD in this dataset, so codes are identified by number and parent section only.
How we verified this
- Filtering market_tsic_insight for entity_count >= 500 and count_large = 0 returned 40 rows, and summing entity_count across those 40 detail rows equals 51,740, matching the separate SUM aggregate query.
- 413 codes have entity_count >= 500 in total. Splitting by count_large = 0 versus count_large > 0 gives 40 and 373, and 40 plus 373 equals 413, confirming no rows were missed.
- 9.7 percent recomputed as 40 divided by 413 equals 9.685 percent, rounded to 9.7 percent.
- 2.7 percent recomputed as 51,740 divided by 1,887,454 total firms across all 413 sizeable codes equals 2.74 percent.
- 81.8 percent recomputed as 42,324 micro firms divided by 51,740 total firms in the 40 codes equals 81.79 percent, compared against the national micro share of 75.1 percent from the data guide.
- 31.1 percent recomputed as the top five codes, 5227 plus 3745 plus 2796 plus 2344 plus 2000, equals 16,112, divided by 51,740 equals 31.14 percent, rounded to 31.1 percent.
- Active count of 23,139 plus inactive count of 28,601 across the 40 codes sums to 51,740, matching entity_count exactly.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons and company size band aggregates. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- OECD. (2026). Thailand. In Financing SMEs and entrepreneurs 2026: An OECD scoreboard. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/financing-smes-and-entrepreneurs-2026_075d8058-en/full-report/thailand_a1b1b4e6.html
- Abreha, K., Cirera, X., Davies, E., Fattal Jaef, R. N., and Maemir, H. (2023, January 12). A missing middle or too much informality? World Bank Blogs. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/developmenttalk/missing-middle-or-too-much-informality
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a large company in the Thai company registry?
DBD sorts companies with a filed financial statement into four size bands, micro, small, medium and large. Large is the top band and includes only 13,876 of the 1,986,709 companies with a size band nationally, 0.7 percent.
Which Thai industry code has the most companies but still no large company?
Code 49321, in the transportation and storage section, holds 5,227 registered companies and has never produced a single large one, as of 7 Jul 2026.
Are these forty codes just shrinking industries?
Not uniformly. Active companies make up 44.7 percent of the 51,740 firms in these codes, below the national active share of 50.0 percent, so the group skews slightly more dormant than the whole registry but is not universally in decline.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). 40 Thai Industry Codes With Zero Large Companies in 2026. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/thai-industries-with-no-large-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.