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Last October, Petch led 128-year-old Osotspa in the country’s biggest IPO of the year, raising a $464 million war chest for expansion by selling a roughly 20% stake that valued the company at $2.3 billion. Osotspa’s stock has since gained a quarter in value, boosting the Osathanugrah family’s 64% holding to roughly $1.9 billion, pushing its overall net worth up by 30% from the year before and vaulting it up four places to eighth on our annual list of Thailand’s richest.
Osotspa expanded into an increasingly long list of healthcare and personal products. Today, Osotspa’s personal-care division, with baby-care and women’s beauty-care products, is a market leader, with 35% of the market for liquid baby soap and 24% of the market for infant talcum powder. The real growth opportunity in energy drinks is outside Thailand, where the craze for tiny bottles of liquid energy has created what California-based Grand View Research estimates is a $50 billion global market that will grow to $84 billion by 2025. Asia-Pacific’s $12 billion energy drink market is growing 7.5% a year. Overseas sales still account for only a fifth of Osotspa’s total beverage sales.
His career as a rock star may be behind him, but his iconoclastic fashion sense endures. Petch’s style is more Bowie than boardroom, and he’s created what he calls a collaborative, open-plan workspace that looks more like an art gallery than an office. His own desk sits enclosed in floor-to-ceiling windows and a large, colorful mural by UK-born painter and filmmaker Sarah Morris. “This is a company from 120 years ago,” he says. “Now, it looks young, like me. I dress young, I feel young.
When Petch started running Osotspa, he supplemented a boardroom heavy on relatives by enlisting industry veterans such as former Siam Commercial Bank president Kannikar Chalitaporn. In 2017, Osotspa recruited as its president Wannipa Bhakdibutr, a 30-year veteran of consumer-products goliath Unilever. She was followed by fellow Unilever alums Suthipa Panyamahasup as chief marketing officer, Sarayut Jitcharungporn in sales, and Apiwan Chatrapongporn in charge of trade marketing.
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Source: Reuters - 🏆 2. / 97 Read more »