Oriental Rubber: How I created a successful Trading Company 

Genup: What was then your initial spark? What made you want to go the entrepreneurial path rather than get a job?

SM: So fortunately, I qualified as an accountant, got my chartered management accountancy from the UK. That’s a four-stage process. So, O levels, A levels and 3 chartered accountancy stages, I did all this in Africa through self-study. So, the point to be noted here is that I never went to university. And then for the 4th stage of the certification, I went to the UK. So, the idea was that once I qualified, I would get a job there. So, I left home with, I think 500 pounds that my dad gave me and of course a ticket. And that was it.  So, I got to England and one of my uncles there connected me to one of his friends who had a pizza place and I used to work there doing his books. And that helped me to stay afloat in the UK. And within 6 months of getting there I had qualified and I continued to work. Unfortunately, this was illegal because I didn’t have a work permit. And this totally sucked. It sucked to be a professional and have that sword hanging on your head that said that just because you don’t have a work permit, you are some sort of an alien or some sort of an illegal guy doing something wrong. And it was so derogatory and a lousy and terrible feeling, so maybe this contributed to the dislike that I developed for England. Apart from the shitty weather etc. But yeah, anyway, I took a holiday to Thailand. And we got here, and I asked my uncle, the one who lived here that I wanted to go and see a factory. And he had a good friend who owned a rubber factory. This person, who I still hold as one of my gurus today, allowed me to visit the factory in Surat Thani in the south of Thailand. I knew nothing about rubber then and it really didn’t matter because all I wanted was to visit a factory. So, I went there for 2 or 3 days and just as a courtesy after that, I wrote a little report about what I saw, and I submitted it to the owner. I just related what I saw there, my observations, my thoughts, some possible improvements from my own point of view. Not that I knew anything about anything at that point anyway, but I wrote some things up and gave it to him. And then I continued on my holiday to Phuket and other places. When I got back to Bangkok, my aunt told me that the owner of the rubber factory called, and he wanted to see me. So, I went to see him, and he offered me a job. And like I said, I didn’t care too much for England anyway, and after consulting with my uncle I accepted the job. And that’s how my rubber journey started in 1992. I worked there for 4 years until 1996 when I got married. 

I’m a firm believer that when two people get married, there’s a whole new constellation of stars that emerges and that is what happened for us. I got back from the wedding and my immediate boss, with whom I wasn’t really getting along told me that he wanted to demote me to do another job. I obviously did not want this so I went back to see the owner again who after listening to me told me not to worry and that he would give me another role, with a bigger responsibility. But that new responsibility required me to travel 20 days a month. So, I asked to be adequately compensated for that which he did not agree to. And so, I had to quit my job. At this stage, which was around 1994 – 1995 I had started to do the MIM, the Masters in Marketing at Thammasat University, the evening course. Because I had always wanted to combine my numbers and figures knowledge with marketing skills which I thought was a great mix. And it was working out nicely. And in 1996 I was getting to the end of the degree and guess what, around that time the person running the program told me that one of the corporates that sponsored the degree was offering a one-year scholarship to Oxford. So, after discussing with my wife, Sonali, I decided to put my name in the hat. 

And they gave it to me. At least verbally.

After congratulating me etc., he asked me if I was Thai. When I told him that I was not Thai, they pulled the scholarship back. 

It was so close and yet so far and our whole world came crashing down. We had already started making plans that we would go and do this thing, just the two of us. But only three days later, boom it all fizzled out. I did write letters pleading my position, but they could not change the rules. So that was that. And of course, at the same time I was having problems with this guy, my immediate boss and the owner.

 So here I was, newly married and virtually without a job. I went back to interviewing with other companies and finally got accepted by Cargill, a big commodities trader. But the money they were giving me was even less than what I was making, and so I really couldn’t settle for that. 

At that time my wife, Sonali, mentioned to me how I’ve always had the idea to do my own thing, and isn’t this the right time to do it? We thought about it for a bit and since we had some savings that we had put aside for a rainy day, we decided that it would be a risk worth taking. If we failed, we could just come back and get jobs. At least that’s what we thought at the time. And that’s the power of a good education behind you, you have the confidence that you can always go out there and get a job. We were born of a service mode, everyone in our family was a professional, none were entrepreneurs. This was at that time, and at that time we didn’t see this on those terms, but we were really stepping out of that security envelope. And to take this one step further, my learning was that of an accountant. We’re bean counters, very conservative, all we see are numbers. We don’t even see the world outside of numbers, well at least I didn’t see. So, although I kept saying that one day, I want to have my own business, I really didn’t mean it. I didn’t really know what it meant to have your own business. Sonali is from a business background, though and she told me to give it a go. 

So, we started our company on the 12th of July 1996, right before the 1997 crash, the Tom Yum Kung crisis. We got a small little office. There was Sonali, myself and one more person. And we just dived into it.