He said the firm would further invest in manpower, digital systems and accounting services to better serve the increasing volume of visitors coming to the country.

“We need to be ready for international visitors flocking to Myanmar. We must have enough capacity in place to serve more tourists if Myanmar is to become one of the top tourism destinations in Asia,” he said.

As part of the strategy to maintain its leadership in the destination management segment, the firm will boost its human capital and workforce over time.

“We have set our heart on doing well at the corporate level. Now, we are focusing on decentralisation, allowing all the line managers to freely make their own decisions on most of the important matters,” he said.

The firm currently has 60 employees with 75 per cent based in the company’s headquarters in Yangon while the rest work at its three branches in Bagan, Mandalay and Inle.

“We are constantly monitoring the latest developments in tourism . We will expand our team with the new generation, such as graduates from tourism study,” he said.

He stressed the importance of grooming local talents. In this regard, the firm provides in-house training to foster the personal development of its staff, and raises awareness on social and environmental problems industry players are facing.

“We have nurtured more than 120 professional service providers in the hospitality sector, and I personally give lectures on tourism at the National Management Degree College,” he said.

Thet Lwin Toh established a tour operations company in 1993, offering pilgrimage tours to India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and quickly became a pioneering outbound tourism operator. Three years later, he founded Myanmar Voyages Co to provide inbound and outbound exclusive tours.

The executive takes pride in becoming the pioneer in bringing Spanish, Northern Europe and South American visitors to Myanmar. As a Travelife certified company, it offers exclusive tours and logistic services such as aviation ground handling and port coordination.

Designed to delight all kind of visitors, the firm offers a wide range of packages from one-day excursions to multi-week tours including extension tours, short breaks, honeymoon trips, classic tours, luxury tours, leisure tours, adventure tours, trekking, balloon adventures, and day trips.

“Our experienced team is always ready to help customers design the trip of their dreams, customising the tours to their satisfaction,” he said.

“We believe that friendship comes before business. We aim to establish close and long-lasting relationships with our partners, trying our best to make them feel like a second family.”

According to the executive, Myanmar Voyages currently enjoys 10 to 20 per cent growth on a yearly basis. Inbound tourism and package tours will be the key driver of the firm’s growth in the near future, while it will also focus on cruise tourism, leisure tours and MICE (Meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions). To date, the firm has provided personalised services to thousands of visitors coming to Myanmar via more than 120 luxury cruises and it has acquired more than half of the market shares in Myanmar’s cruise tourism.

In light of Myanmar’s Look East policy which aims to boost visitor arrivals from Eastern countries, Thet Lwin Toh foresees an increase in visitors from Japan, China, Korea and India in the next few months.

Yet, he considers zero dollar tours by some Chinese companies as a “growing threat” to Myanmar’s tourism industry.

“We have witnessed bold moves by tourism authorities to improve visitor arrivals by allowing visa-free travels and the visa-on-arrival scheme for some countries. It is a step in the right decision, and we expect it to continue,” he said.

“But, the authorities must be cautious about foreign tour operators taking advantages of our opening, and should take measures to protect the interest of locals.”

The company, Tri Trerak Co Ltd, recently launched its ‘ME’ jigsaw soaps as the first product in its portfolio. The soaps target premium customers both in Thailand and abroad.

Since starting the business two months ago, the first lot of 50,000 pieces of ‘ME’ soaps have been sold domestically. The company has had new orders for more than 100,000 pieces, Trerak said.

“I think I’m professional about beauty. I’m 52, but still look young, and I would like to share this beauty secret with everyone,” said Trerak, the managing director of Tri Trerak Co Ltd.

“The main inspiration behind the launch of my own cosmetics and skincare firm is ‘ME’ and Thai women of all generations. I would like to share beauty secrets with Thai women. They are so beautiful and in good shape.

“This means they always take care of their beauty and health. And that makes me think about myself that I should never stop taking care of myself. This is why I came up with my product,” said Trerak.

She added that she expects her business to grow fast because she has come up with a niche product with very good branding.

“My brand will offer all skincare products as well as cosmetics in the future. It is my dream to create both cosmetics and skincare lines. I’m crazily in love with these products,” said Trerak.

“I am focusing on innovation and having a niche for all my products. I would like to have it as close to nature as possible,” said Trerak, adding, “I have the courage to do things differently.”

Trerak said she wants to create a strong brand with a clear concept, which is: ‘Boutique beauty is urban, unique, chic with the best quality’. Also, innovation of new products is the main key,” she said.

“I am blending all these together for my customers to see and feel the difference to have loyal customers in the future,” said Trerak. “With my ambition and dreams, I would like to see my business grow stronger and stronger. I will continue to produce innovative and boutique skincare products for everyone,” she added.

Trerak said that she is yet to export her products to other countries.

“At the moment, we are dealing with the buyers from Sri Lanka and Bahrain. We are working on the documentation, because those countries have strict regulations on the import of cosmetic products.”

She revealed that when she attended the Baan Lae Suan Fair last month, she was contacted by two well-known department stores such as Siam Discovery Center and Lotte Duty Free to present and sell her products in their department stores. “However, I have to manage and complete our shop within the next two months as promised,” she said.

Trerak said that she has been busy this month attending a business-matching platform in Myanmar. She is also preparing for another local fair called Style Bangkok and an international fair in Hong Kong. She is also setting up franchise stores in Chiang Mai and Phuket in the next two months, Trerak said.

Trerak said in the first year of operations, the company expects 70 of sales in the domestic market and 30 per cent from exports.

“Over the next three years, I expect to have 70 per cent of annual revenue from exports and 30 per cent from the domestic market,” she said.

Wichit drew on the experiences of his older brother Chatchai, who had risen steadily through the ranks as a senior banker.

Wichit earned his stripes at a number of financial institutions before becoming the chief executive of Summit Capital, one of Thailand’s biggest motorcycle hire-purchase companies.

His role model Chatchai, who graduated from Thammasat University in Bangkok, had worked in Kasikornbank and now serves as the president and CEO of Government Savings Bank.

“In a Chinese-Thai family, the biggest brother is often viewed as another father figure by his younger siblings.

When my father passed away, my bigger brother became like my father; he was my role model,” Wichit says in an exclusive interview with The Nation Weekend.

“For this reason, I was attracted to his career choice, in particular. Seeing the kind of challenges he faced in the banking industry inspired me to follow him and enter the industry myself.”

His first job after graduating with a master’s degree in the US was with American Express (Thailand).

“This job taught me the foundations of the retail banking industry. One of the key reasons for my choosing American Express as my first post-graduation job was the prospect of fostering strong marketing skills in the credit card business,” he says.

“This is because, at the time, credit card businesses had the highest requirements for marketing activities when compared to other retail banking businesses such as personal loans or mortgages.”

Another key factor in his choice of American Express was that he wanted to work in a company with an “American working culture”, which was “progressive, aggressive and egalitarian”.

“The working culture was not limited by seniority. As long as you had the skills and determination, everything was possible. This was very different from the Thai working culture back then, where you could not become CEO unless you were one of the oldest employees,” he recalls.

After working for American Express for seven years, Wichit joined Ayudhya Allianz CP (AACP) Life Assurance as its chief marketing officer.

Wichit admits that this appointment deviated slightly from his original plan of working in the banking industry. However, he saw the value of working for a life insurance company and joined AACP in 1998.

“By the time I left AACP in 2004, I had helped the company rise to become the second-largest life insurance firm in the country,” he says.

“When I joined AACP, the marketing department consisted only of me, my secretary and a management trainee. On my second day, my secretary left, leaving me with just my management trainee,” Wichit says with a laugh as he reflects on what became his growing attachment for his AACP post.

“Seven years later, I became the deputy CEO at AACP, and the marketing department consisted of up to 140 employees, with an additional 800 employees in the sales department. I facilitated the growth of AACP’s marketing and sales teams, growing from only two employees to almost a thousand.

This task was both challenging and fun, but most importantly, it fostered a kind of attachment within me towards my department in AACP.”

Despite the success Wichit had at the life insurance firm, when the offer came for him to work at banking giant HSBC, he was willing to move on from AACP to pursue his dream of becoming a banker.

“Leaving AACP was bitter-sweet. I had seen my department grow from nothing into one of the country’s most successful marketing departments in the life insurance industry. However, being a banker was my original dream, and I was determined to make it come true,” he recalls.

It was at HSBC that Wichit finally had the opportunity to work directly in the retail banking business again as its head of retail banking and wealth management unit, and in 2012 he joined the Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsi) as its executive vice president. Then, in 2014, Wichit became the CEO of Summit Capital.

“Despite it being a much smaller company, I left my post at Krungsi and joined Summit Capital because Summit Capital offered a new experience in retail banking for me,” he says. “I was curious about how financial institutions can offer loans to a customer segment with almost no proper financial assets.”

In all of Wichit’s former posts in the retail banking business, be it with American Express, HSBC or Krungsi, all his clients were middle to high-income consumers. However, the key customer segment for Summit Capital is different; they are low-income members of the grassroots economy.

“This uniqueness of Summit Capital presented a new challenge for me, and I felt that without having worked with high, middle and lower-income clients, my dream of becoming a master of retail banking would not have been fully realised,” he says.

Wichit credits the adaptability and flexibility of his employees at Summit Capital for allowing him to implement his business expansion strategies, leading to the rapid growth of the motorcycle hire-purchase company.

He has continually expanded Summit Capital’s market, enlarging its total number of booked contracts from 3,000 a month to 10,000 in just five years. This has helped profits to expand by tenfold.

The key to growing a business, as Wichit has done with various companies throughout his career, is a long-term master plan.

“I used the first three months of my position as Summit Capital’s CEO to get familiar with the company and its position in the market,” he says. “Then, I wrote a five-year master plan to expand the market of Summit Capital. Since then, we have not diverted from the expansionary master plan and have seen continual growth in our market share, assets and profits.”

A company’s master plan, says Wichit, is the key to expanding a business through effective management.

“A well-thought-out long-term master plan and a clear overall business direction is a necessary component to growing a company quickly,” he says. “If a company changes its overall direction every year, it will move from left to right instead of forwards. Firms need to stick to their master plans and execute them properly.”

He said Royal Enfield had recently announced its plans for assembly operations in Thailand, the company’s first to be set up outside India.

 “The initial response to Royal Enfield in the Asean region, which is one of the largest two-wheeler markets, has been very encouraging,” Lal said.

“With the upcoming assembly operations expected to come on stream in the first half of fiscal 2019-20 and plans to further expand our dealer presence in the region, Royal Enfield is well poised to fill the gap in the mid-sized segment in the region,” he said, referring to motorbikes with engine sizes of between 250cc and 750cc.

The company yesterday said it would have capital expenditure of US$100 million for fiscal 2019-20. The planned capex will include completion of the construction work of the Technology Centre, Phase-2 of the Vallam Vadagal plant in Tamil Nadu, India, and the development of new platforms and products. Also, for 2019-20, Royal Enfield plans a production of 950,000 motorcycles.

On the company’s investment plans, Lal said that this year Royal Enfield would focus on strengthening its product development capabilities and working towards new global platforms.

“The second phase of our Vallam Vadagal plant near Chennai, Tamil Nadu, is progressing well and is expected to commence commercial production in the second half of this financial year,” he said.

“The construction of our Technology Centre in Chennai is also nearing its completion. With a wide distribution network in India, growing international presence and the building state-of-the-art capabilities in product development, Royal Enfield is well on its way to grow the middleweight motorcycle segment globally in the coming years.”

EML announced the appointment of Vinod Dasari as the chief executive officer of Royal Enfield and his appointment to the board of EML as an executive director. It also appointed Vinod Aggarwal, who is managing director and chief executive officer of VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd, as a non-executive director on the EML board. Both appointments are effective immediately.

Dasari takes over from Lal, who will continue as the managing director of Eicher Motors Ltd. At Royal Enfield, Lal will continue to support the team on product and brand-related areas.

For the 12 months to March 2018, Eicher Motors recorded record total income of 8,965 Indian crores (Bt44.47 billion). Eicher Motors is listed on India’s BSE and National Stock Exchange, and has been part of the NSE’s benchmark Nifty 50 Index since April 1, 2016.

“We want to understand the very early development stage of a young economy, which direction it takes, and which role we can play. That is why we are engaged with Myanmar,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Nation.

According to Meinshausen, geo-politics matters when it comes to expansion of Evonik’s business in the region.

“In the next decade, Asia is for sure the most interesting and active area in the world. The largest economy in Asia will be China where everybody is focusing on. We believe we have to look what is happening outside of China, and then Southeast Asian economies come into play,” he said.

“Myanmar is a good part of Asia, thanks to its strategic location in Southeast Asia. This market is really interesting, and that is why we are here and seriously looking into expansion of our portfolio.”

Meinshausen said the firm would focus on four key sectors while looking at opportunities to expand in other promising areas. Currently, animal nutrition, coatings and paints industry, healthcare and personal care as well as household care products are on top of the firm’s expansion strategy.

As a multinational company, Evonik has partnered with domestic and foreign firms to distribute a wide range of its products into the Myanmar market. To date, the firm has more than 10 business partners including big names like the United Paints Group.

“We love working with our local partners because they know the market well. It is really important for us to understand the mechanisms of a market first,” he said.

“We need to make sure that we get to know the legal framework and totally understand what we can do in Myanmar. We are looking very closely at the latest developments in Myanmar. We see an investor-friendly environment here, and our strategic approach is really long-term.”

Meinshausen believes in the young population of Myanmar who are energetic, enthusiastic and eager to learn new things. He foresees a full-fledged business operations in Myanmar in the next few years, though it has yet to establish an office in the country.

“We have to be active. It is more important than being fast. If you are too speedy, you rush and then you fail. We are here to avoid it. We need to observe, then we will be on top of the opportunities that are developing,” he said.

Meinshausen said the firm would invest in grooming local talents so they can ultimately have their own infrastructure and own employees.

“Ultimately, it is important for us to have our own people here. That is why we invest in people. Things are developing nicely, and I can imagine our set-up will change in the next three years,” he said.