Introducing the business heir to the famous pastry shop, The Waffle, let’s get to know her as she shares her story.

Hello! My name is Rayakorn Panitnarakul or “Toon”. I graduated from EEBA, Faculty of Economics at Kasetsart University and I majored in Agricultural Business and Food with a minor in Logistics. Since my freshman year, the university life has been fun and amazing for me. I participated in many activities, events and camps where I made a lot of new friends.

During my junior year (3rd year), I was head of ETG (Economics Training Group) of EEBA where I managed the activities within our major. That year, I also started thinking about my plans after graduation. It was getting close, and yet I still had no idea what I should do or what I’m passionate about. My family’s business was an option, however, at that time, I thought that it just wasn’t for me.

It took me only 3 years and a half to finish university and back then, I planned to get into the Work & Travel program before starting a new job. Unfortunately, the situation did not let it go as planned; not having been able to go for the Work & Travel program, I had to focus solely on beginning my working life then.

I still had no clue on what I wanted to do in life…

I started applying for jobs aimlessly—just browsing through interesting positions and matching the amount of salary provided. It was absurd that I didn’t even know the job scopes of the positions I applied for. I spent a whole month waiting for replies on my job applications.

I realized I was idly wasting time and so I decided to try working in my parents’ company. “At least, there I’d be able to experience the real-life working situation”, I thought to myself, before resuming my hunt for another job that would suit my interests.

The longer I worked in my family’s business, the bigger the responsibilities that were entrusted to me, and I knew I couldn’t just simply leave it behind. In the end, I officially became an employee of my family’s business, The Waffle Supply Co., Ltd.

The Waffle Supply Co., Ltd., since 2004, mainly runs as a franchise business under the brand “The Waffle” with more than 100 branches within the country. For almost 20 years, we’ve been the leading and the all time No.1 waffle brand in Thailand. We developed our product with plans to expand to a new market and now we have the “Hello Waffle” product, a ready-to-eat waffle which is sold in 7-Eleven stores. Although, getting into the 7-Eleven is already a big achievement for the business, it’s just the beginning of our new path to expand and grow into a worldwide market.

The reason I chose to study EEBA at KU…

The main reason why I chose EEBA was because this program combines both Economics and Business courses which I found to be very interesting.

As a SME entrepreneur, the economic skills I gained made me capable of understanding the nature of the market more efficiently, while the business skills helped me utilize the basic techniques on how to work on and stay in the market. The EEBA program not only provided the knowledge I needed but also gave me a lot of experiences. I had good relationships among friends, professors, and especially our office staff that warmly took care of us the whole time.

In addition, the program also offered extracurricular activities that gave me a huge advantage in my current profession. Outside the classroom, I was able to practice working in teams and even more so, I also gained leadership skills which we all know is vital in the workplace nowadays.

In my point of view, graduation just formally marks the end of the student life and the degree is just a piece of paper. Taking on opportunities where you can experience hands-on working conditions will give you a much more fighting chance in the ever-changing competitive workforce.

Hi everyone! You can call me Bank (Panuwat Treeveeranuwat). To tell you a little bit about myself, I used to be a golf player back during my younger teen years with the goal of becoming a world-class professional player someday. Later on, I found that my outlook on life was changing and by 18, I wanted to become a businessman, and that’s why I chose to study in the EEBA program.

I decided on Logistics as my major of study. Within the EEBA program, I learned a lot of things. My friends and professors encouraged me to become a person of a good mindset. Most of the EEBA students are business owners. This was important and very helpful to me because, then, our topic of conversations would be about work and sharing ideas. We were able to expose ourselves to different perspectives, which made us have an open mind about businesses.

Time passed by quickly, and soon I was already in my third year. Back then, I still didn’t have a set goal on what I wanted to achieve in life and I wasted most of my time on unnecessary things. I realized then that I needed to do something. When I took the leap and pursued becoming an entrepreneur, I knew that I finally found myself.

I started a small business with two of my closest friends. Our first idea was to sell dietary supplements, but it didn’t work out as we attempted to start it out without knowing how to promote it. For our second project, we thought of selling jewelries–lucky stone bracelets to be specific. We managed to pull through for half a year, but decided to end it.

After that, I found an advertisement for “car umbrellas” from the USA (Lanmodo). At first, I only wanted to buy it for its purpose, but it gave me an idea that this could be my chance. I emailed the company and 2 months later, I visited their factory for contract signing. Officially, I became an authorized sole distributor for Lanmodo in Thailand.

Starting out as an entrepreneur, things were going great for me and I was invited to be a guest speaker to discuss Social Commerce in DAAT 2018 (Digital Advertising Association of Thailand). DAAT is the biggest stage for advertisements in Thailand.

By 2019, I graduated. I found a new business opportunity–being a service and warehouse provider for online sellers. I established another business with my two partners, the ShipSpace Fulfillment company. It’s a solution for online sellers in terms of the storage, packaging and delivery of their merchandise. We provide service to help retailers through all these processes.

In 2020, I had a problem with my first venture. As more and more people look into car umbrellas, the competitors decided to cut the price; this was normal for all businesses, but this had an effect on my sales of Lanmodo in Thailand. And so, I decided to make a local brand of the product, CarColoni. This brand was aimed to cover all demands of my customers who are not willing to pay for the higher-priced, Lanmodo. In addition, not only is CarColoni more affordable, it also sells other car accessories.

This year 2021, with the ongoing Covid-19 situation, many companies are still suffering losses, some are even selling their own businesses to survive. This was a new problem yet again. Nowadays, in the market, we all know that there are real estate agents who sell different properties and areas but there are no service agents for selling SME businesses. Owners want to sell their business because they’re operating at a loss, but the problem is that they do not know how to sell it at a reasonable price and fast. With this idea in mind, I started a new company, FlipSpace. Here, our goal is to become a Business Seller Assistant for SME. During this time, I am also proud to mention that I decided to be a sponsor of FJGT (Future Junior Golf Thailand).

I own four businesses at the moment — Lanmodo (car umbrella), CarColoni (car accessories), ShipSpace Fulfillment (warehouse and service provider), and FlipSpace (business seller assistant for SME). I manage my family business (2 apartments for rental) as well. I also have investments in real estate, stocks and mutual funds. With the current circumstances, Covid-19 has made an impact on real estate markets making its prices go down. I must say that it is a good time to invest in condominiums and get capital gains. Fortunately, the pandemic has not affected any of my businesses, that is because my operations and sale channels are all moving online.

My main goal is to continue expanding my ventures. For those of you who are currently studying in the EEBA program and those that are planning to start your own business, you’re choosing the right way. My advice would be to put your efforts and focus on it. You have to be willing to accept and explore what you don’t know yet, take risks, and learn more about it, so that when the time comes when you’ve made the foundation for your business, you’ll be competent to handle the uncertainty that comes with it.

My name is Golf. I work for Google as a Business Strategy Manager. I started last year 2020, most of my work is focused on marketing and consulting for companies to utilize advertising services via Google and YouTube.

But we’ll go more about that later on, keep reading my story to find out!

Why did I choose the EEBA Program?

Before studying in the EEBA program, I enrolled at a tutoring institute and tried to learn about the economics subject. After that, I found that it was right for me and found my passion in economics. I chose EEBA because of the balance of its program between economics and business. It does not solely focus on economic theory alone, which illustrates versatility.

The friends I’ve known while studying were also nice and the environment was great, not to mention, there are many delicious restaurants nearby the campus.

My university life was the best period of my life. I was able to find myself and it shaped me to become who I am up to this day. I would also like to invite you to try to discover yourself here as much as possible and test out new experiences. For example, pursuing an internship in a field you’re interested in. If you’re interested in doing business, start it. Don’t be afraid of failures. Failing is not a bad thing, because we can always learn and grow from our mistakes. My advice is to ask yourself, what do you want your success to look like? What kind of life do you want to have? Think about it and then do your best to reach those goals.

Master’s at Duke University

I pursued my Master’s degree in Management Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. When I was young, I studied in America for a while. Back then, I had no interest in studying at all and almost failed to finish my high school. However, when I came back at a later time and had the chance to study my favorite subjects, I set a goal for myself — to get into one of America’s top 10 universities. When doing my research, I felt that Duke had the strengths and qualities that matched with what I wanted, and so I applied there.

The environment at Duke University was very competitive in the sense that the students were highly intellectual and smart. Most of the Master’s students graduated with an average GPA of more than 3.50 from their undergraduate degree. Thus, it was a highly competitive environment academically.

What’s more was that the competition continued to get even harder as time passed by. Some students were already sending out their job applications just in the second month of the first semester. With the major companies around, we went to workshops, networking events, and interviews after school everyday.

It was very different from when I was an undergraduate student. The experience was similar to full-time working rather than studying. Most of the time, it was all about group work, learning cases, looking for jobs. Honestly, it was rather mentally exhausting than physically draining. Nevertheless, it was still a great experience that allowed us to explore a lot of things that I’ve never seen before in Thailand.

Before studying at Duke University, I worked in consulting. My experience at the university led me to readily try to venture into other career paths, such as the technology industry, which was booming at that time compared to consulting and investment banking. Thinking back, if I didn’t study at Duke University, I probably would have never applied to work for Google.

What’s working at Google like?

Since I was a university student, Google was seen as a dream company by most because of its innovation and impact on billions of its users all over the world. Google has a great environment and organization structure. They provide importance to human resources, in terms of their employees’ welfare, personal development and well-being.

Back in 2018, a recruiter from Google contacted me via LinkedIn. However, at that time, I had planned to start my own business. In 2019, I established a fitness studio, Pulse Bangkok, but the business was closed due to Covid-19. After that, I decided to finally try my luck and apply for a job at Google on my own.

Applying to Google was quite challenging as it requires an average of 5 rounds of interviews with a department head before actually receiving an offer. The department head will receive instructions from the hiring committee to test the candidate’s different areas of expertise, which I would like to divide into three main areas:

1. Hard Skills – technical ability to work out and solve problems and analyze data
2. Soft Skills – qualities in leadership, ability to work as part of a team (e.g. personality and attitude interview questions and role plays)
3. “Googliness” – it means, “doing the right thing”; this word describes the characteristics that Google is looking for in their employees.

I think that the most important skill in today’s management is the ability to analyze and learn from our own mistakes. Modern businesses nowadays change very quickly and it requires constant adaptation. Therefore it’s important for a person to demonstrate his or her capability to measure, think and act quickly in situations.

At present…

At the moment, I also have an online business with my fellow coworkers from Google, it is based on e-commerce and affiliate marketing. Recently, I created a Youtube channel for Lo-fi music, my channel name is “Stylist Playlist Archive”. If you have the time, please subscribe!

Our business platform is 100% online. We bought a domain through Shopify and Wix, and are using Google Ads to sell our products in America.

While working at Google, we’ve seen many online business models that can be easily started without having to secure a high budget. It  gave me the flexibility I needed because it’s manageable with a day job, that’s why I decided to start the business and partner with two of my other friends. In the early months, our business grew very rapidly due to the high mobility of online businesses. Since we already have the knowledge and experience in this area, we can also change products and sales methods according to market trends all the time, and we have been working hard on this project until now.

In the short term, we want to grow the business tenfold in a year. We are still testing out our options and we are in the learning phase to invest our profit from our sales business for capital. We are continuously trying out new things and I believe, soon we’ll reach the right direction for us to go to.