Seaweed Billionaire* – Tao Kae Noi

Aithipat Kulaponvanich

Age: 25

Company: http://www.taokaenoi.co.th/

Company Net worth: $800 mill Baht (USD$ 24 millions)

When I first watched The Billionaire, I was moved by his inspiring story.

Aithipat Kulapongvanich or better know as Top was an average 16 year old teen who, like most ordinary teenage boy, loves playing computer games.

He realised that he had too many of those special game weaponry items that you acquired if you reach a high level.

With surplus of these items, he found out that he could make good money selling them to people who need it via chatrooms.

At just 16 he was earning 400,00 Baht(USD$12,000) by trading his game items.

He even spent his money buying more computers to keep up with his business and was soon buying a car.

However his luck was short lived.

A year later he was banned and his account got suspended from the game and the gaming community.

He was failing badly in school and he's parents desperately wanted him to finish high school.

However, with his bad grades he barely manage to make it into private school let alone a top school .

In class, he could hardly concentrate on studies and found that what he studied could not help him get rich. So he skipped a class or two to look for things to do, when he saw what could be his next business venture, selling hot chestnut off the street.

He came up to the old man who was selling the chestnut and would pretend to be buying them but all he wanted was to know how to roast the chestnuts.

He asked the old man what was to be roasted with the chestnut , where to buy the raw chestnuts and the type of water that made the chestnuts glisten.

Top kept buying from one chestnut stall to another asking question after question till he knew exactly how it was done, to start his very own chestnut shop.

With all the information gathered, Top set out to look for a chestnut roasting machine to rent and found a space in the shopping mall.

He started skipping class to buy bags of chestnuts in the morning ,drag it to his small makeshift stall and with the help from his very old uncle, sold it in the shopping mall.

Things were great and people started buying his chestnuts, however the smoke from the chestnuts cause the ceiling of the shopping mall to turn yellow and the mall's owner forced him to moved out of their shopping mall. He was making 2000 bahts selling chestnuts but being evicted out of the mall meant he was left with nothing.

While he thought things couldn't get any worse he soon finds out that :

• ·        His father's business went into bankrupt with 400mil baht debt(USD$12Mil)

• ·        His family's home was about to be listed for foreclosure by the bank

• ·        His family was moving to China to live with his elder sister

Face with no place to go and nothing left for Top and his family, moving to China seems like the best plan of action.

But instead of moving with his family, Top decided to stay and prayed that things will work out.

He found had an idea of mass producing crispy fried seaweed that his girlfriend brought for him one afternoon from a nearby town she'd visited.

The crispy seaweed had a unique taste that would sell well.

He had envision of selling the crispy fried seaweed to 7-11 stores as they are known to have a store all across the country worldwide.

Even before selling to 7-11, he had difficulty frying the seaweed without making it taste bitter.

He end up wasting 100,000 baht(USD$3000) worth of seaweed trying to find ways to perfect it.

With little money left over, his uncle and him work tirelessly until an unfortunate incident happen while his uncle was frying the seaweed.

He fell over and knocked his head spilling the oil and left the remaining last few seaweeds soaked in rain water.

By a stroke of luck, that very incident actually enabled him to make the perfect seaweed.

With the seaweed soaked and dried in water, it diminished the bitter taste and after frying them, what's left was a nice crispy crunchy seaweed that taste resoundingly similar to how it taste like from the nearby town.

He tweaked it to add better flavour and package it plainly, naming it Tao Kae Noi(Young Boss).

He went to the head office of 7-11 and tried to pitch the idea of selling his crispy fried seaweed.

His idea was accepted, and the people at 7-11 wanted to see his factory and inspect it for GMP.

Once again he had face a stumbling block and with what little money he had, he beg the owner of a rundown workshop to allow him to rent his workshop as his seaweed factory for a short period of time.

With a newly set-up workshop cum factory, he employed people to fry and package the seaweed.

However the QA/QC inspector was not impress with the quality and as it failed to qualify for proper handling of food and his product was not accepted by 7-11.

The setback throw him off guard but he knew he could try again and improve things,

He worked out and changed accordingly on the list of things which didn't meet the criteria and persevered hoping that this time round things would change.

The second GMP inspection proved to be the turning point and snowballed tremendously from there.

With initially having less then 10 people working for Tao Kae Noi when it started, Tao Kae Noi now employs almost up to 2000 employees.

Today Tao Kae Noi Seaweed can be found all across Asia, China, Australia, Canada and even UK.

Within a span of 2 years, Top paid off his father's $400mil baht debt and earns $800mill baht(USD $24mil) a year.

I loved this inspiring story because Top was young and when you're that young, all you ever think of is playing or fooling around, but he didn't and he couldn't.

He had many many instances where he could just continued studying to take the easy way out to become just another banker or doctor but he never did because he knew that would not help pay off his father's enormous debt.

He could have left for China with his family but he stayed to help pay off with however much he could.

And so he did…

He become one of Thailand's youngest Billionaire*