Biggest Thai Home Builder Moving Abroad to Expand Company
|
The success of one Thai property tycoon might owe less to bricks and mortar than to fish guts. Growing up in the coastal province of Chonburi 40 years ago, Thongma Vijitpongpun would help his father hawk fish maw soup from a pair of hampers slung on a shoulder pole, selling to a clientele of laborers.
Thongma, then just 10, couldn't understand why his father charged half the going price. "I used to ask him, 'Why don't you just substitute pig skin for fish bladder, like the other hawkers? Why not use pig blood instead of chicken blood?'" His father explained that he wanted to give his customers good quality and make it affordable. "That idea influenced me a lot," says Thongma.
And so he didn't acquire his real estate fortune in big gulps, taking large profits from a handful of deals the way some players do. Instead he did it the hard way, pleasing tens of thousands of small customers with good, economical products. He builds town houses for the Everyman, the low- or middle-income Thai who wants a home in Bangkok for the sticker price of an entry-level automobile. That's made Pruksa Real Estate the biggest developer in the country. And since founding it just 17 years ago, Thongma, 52, has earned a fortune that FORBES ASIA valued last September at $430 million and ranked No. 13 in Thailand.
