As can often be the case with children born with a silver spoon in their mouths, Kavin Kanjanapas paid little attention to education when he was young.
Long before he became the chief executive of BTS Group, Mr Kavin had quite a lavish childhood. He spent most of his early life in Hong Kong, where he was born and studied until he was 13.
Mr Kavin, 41, is the eldest son of Keeree Kanjanapas, the founder and owner of Bangkok Mass Transit System Plc (BTSC), the operator of the skytrain. He's also the nephew of Stelux Holdings founder Mongkol Kanjanapas, who was one of East Asia's richest men before passing away over a decade back.
In the case of Mr Kavin, it appears that when it comes to business acumen, the apple has not fallen far from the tree. His talents were first made manifest while studying engineering at Stonyhurst College, a private boarding school in Britain. Together with a few fellow students, he invested in a car-tuning business, focusing mainly on Japanese models for resale in the UK.
"Although we didn't treat it as a serious business, it was quite lucrative," reminisces Mr Kavin.
Despite his advantages, the road to the top was not an easy one. Shortly after graduating, Mr Kavin was summoned home to help rescue his father's company, BTSC, which had found itself in perilous straits in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis. In the darkest days, its debt ballooned as high as 100 billion baht.
The company's investment in Thailand's first elevated mass transit project turned out to be ill-timed. Its opening in late 1999 coincided with a sharp decline in purchasing power.
The four core pillars of BTS Group Holdings will remain unchanged in the future, says Mr Kavin, although a slight change may be needed to ensure maximum synergy within the group.
His family lost most of its fortune and nearly surrendered control of BTSC, which Mr Kavin's father had founded seven years earlier with the aim of easing Bangkok's notorious traffic congestion.
While Mr Keeree was busy dealing with debt rehabilitation and bargaining with creditors at home, Mr Kavin was assigned to deal with debts owed by the family's businesses -- mainly restaurants and sportswear -- in Hong Kong.
The family was forced to shed almost all of its interests in Hong Kong to help shore up businesses in Thailand. All the while, Mr Kavin's own life was in danger due to less-than-amused creditors.
"Just like with Hong Kong mafia movies, I even encountered some debt collectors who brought blades along with them," he says. "Fortunately, nothing serious happened once they learned of our plight. In fact, some of our one-time creditors are even my friends now."
Owing to the financial crisis, Mr Kavin developed a close relationship with his father. Once he settled down in Thailand in 1997, he began to work shoulder-to-shoulder with him to salvage their sinking ship, a project that entailed debt-restructuring talks with banks, including a rehabilitation process involving recapitalisation. They also needed to find new partners and sell off assets and land.
Mr Kavin always finds ways to try cooking, his favourite hobby — even during his family holiday in Bhutan.
At the same time, Mr Kavin was given 5 million baht as seed capital to run VGI Global Media Plc, formerly called Global Technologies and Telecom Company Ltd, to handle marketing and advertising services for the skytrain.
The father-and-son duo spent nearly 10 years battling not only insolvency but also the government, which tried to bully its way into taking over the skytrain system, citing national interest and the necessity for future mass transit expansion.
The family started to see a glimmer of hope after BTSC, which shared a huge portion of its debt, exited its rehabilitation plan in 2008 and merged with Tanayong, the property development firm Mr Keeree founded in 1968. It became BTS Group Holdings in 2010, with Mr Kavin as its chief executive. The group focuses on four core businesses: mass transit, property, media and services.
The initial public offering of BTS Group Holdings was Asia's largest in 2013 and the third-largest globally when it launched the 62.5-billion-baht BTS Rail Mass Transit Growth Infrastructure Fund (BTSGIF) -- Thailand's first infrastructure fund. Backed by future passenger fares, the fund invests in extending train lines in Bangkok and beyond.
The offering drove his father, Mr Keeree, into the ranks of the country's billionaires. Forbes ranked him the 13th-richest person in Thailand as of Aug 25, with a net worth of US$1.55 billion.
Likewise, VGI has been highly successful in developing its lifestyle media network. It is now a major provider of out-of-home media solutions in Thailand, having more than 10,000 large still-image screens installed in the skytrain network and at large retail stores nationwide.
Mass transit development and media are two of the company's four business pillars that Mr Kavin has assured will remain strong and successful after he took over the top job from Keeree Kanjanapas, his father and the founder of BTS Group.
It also has more than 11,000 square metres of advertising space in the product display zones of large, modern stores and around 5,000 digital screens and other types of out-of-home (OOH) advertising at skytrain stations, Tesco Lotus, Big C and Watson stores, along with large office towers throughout Bangkok.
It further holds licences to manage various forms of advertising at 13 airports operated by the Airports of Thailand Plc and the Civil Aviation Department.
In addition, the company runs retail shops in 23 BTS stations, on top of radio networks covering nearly 2,000 stores in Thailand.
VGI in fiscal 2015, which ended March 31, 2016, contributed 34% of BTS Group's operating revenue of 6.14 billion baht, second only to its mass transit business, which accounted for 39.7%. The property development and services units contributed 14.6% and 12.1%, respectively.
Outside Thailand, VGI has set its sights on expanding the transit media business into other Asean countries, with Malaysia being the first stop.
The company recently joined with three leading Malaysian OOH media companies to form a joint venture operating a 10-year contract for ad space on a new mass transit system in Malaysia. The joint venture, Titanium Compass Sdn Bhd (TCSB), will manage ad space at 31 stations and 58 trains on the new 51-kilometre SBK Line.
VGI is also considering an e-payment business in Malaysia.
With regard to the group's more established business, Mr Kavin was appointed chief executive of BTS Group Holdings Plc in 2015, indicating that he is more than ready to manage the family empire.
According to Mr Kavin, future prospects for the company's four core businesses, or pillars, have become equally promising thanks to Thailand's ambitious infrastructure and mass transit development plans, people's changing lifestyles, blossoming property development (particularly along mass transit routes) and growing tourism.
BTSC, for example, is the sole concessionaire for the original skytrain network, comprising 23.5 kilometres of elevated tracks and 23 stations built on single-column support structures. This network consists of the Silom Line (Dark Green) and Sukhumvit Line (Light Green), running through the heart of Bangkok's commercial, business and tourism districts.
BTSC has also been awarded operating and maintenance agreements by Krungthep Thanakom Co, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), for two skytrain extensions: the 2.2km extension to the Silom Line (two stations) and the 5.25km extension to the Sukhumvit Line (five stations).
The company is bidding on extensions for the 31.4km Light Green Line (13km from Bearing to Samut Prakan and 18.4km for the Mo Chit-Saphan Mai-Khu Khot route), branching off from the core network.
The group is quite confident that BTSC will be awarded the operating contract for the Light Green Line extension this year, with the first extension due to begin partial operations in early 2017. The cabinet's endorsed guidelines require that the entire Green Line network be run by a single operator to ensure smooth operations.
The group also feels optimistic about operating the Pink Line (Khae Rai-Min Buri, 34.5km) and the Yellow Line (Lat Phrao-Samrong, 30.4km), which are the first lines expected to be awarded under a public-private partnership (PPP) concession as recently announced by the government. The government's goal is to expand Greater Bangkok's rail network and promote PPPs to ease the state's long-term financial burden.
The 39.6km Orange Line (Taling Chan-Min Buri) and BMA's planned extensions and other feeder systems such as the Grey Line, the 26km monorail that will link Watcharapol and Tha Phra via Rama IX Road, a 15km monorail linking Bang Na and Suvarnabhumi airport, and the Dark Green Line extension (Bang Wa-Borommaratchachonnani, 7km) are all on the company's investment radar.
These lines are expected to be operational by 2019-20.
BTS Group is also looking for new rail investment opportunities in Asean, particularly in Vietnam, Indonesia and China.
The company has previously tried its hand at overseas expansion, though without success. It had signed memoranda of understanding on mass transit development projects in Vietnam and Indonesia that were later scrapped.
BTS Group also put forth a failed bid for Line 16 of the Beijing subway in 2014. Line 16 in western Beijing is a north-south route from Bei'anhe to Wanping, totalling 29 stations and spanning 50km. The line is expected to commence operations in 2018. This project is a PPP investment scheme.
Skytrain passengers stand in queues at busy Siam station. Mr Kavin's father, Keeree Kanjanapas, had sought to ease Bangkok's notorious traffic congestion when he founded BTSC.
But even with those minor setbacks, the company is still moving forward on solid ground.
"We believe the four core pillars of BTS Group Holdings will remain unchanged in the future, although a slight change may be needed to ensure maximum synergy within the group," Mr Kavin says. "But the organisational management style may change a bit, as mine is a bit more flexible, handling problems in an amiable manner with an eye towards compromise, unlike my father's style, which is straightforward and unyielding."
But his father's way of doing things, he admits, did have its advantages in rockier times.
"During that time of crisis, I used to say we should just quit and urged my father to shift to other businesses," Mr Kavin says. "But he was persistent, showing me that when outsiders try to seize your house, you might not have a gun or other weapon to defend yourself, but you might be able to find a toothpick. And with that toothpick, you can at least strike back against those trying to hurt you."
Being where they are today, he now sees one of their biggest challenges in the sphere of human resources, as it is always difficult to attract good candidates and keep them on for the long run.
Another challenge is language. Born in Hong Kong, Mr Kavin's literacy in Thai is somewhat lacking, which has been an issue when he's had to sort out piles of documents and contracts written primarily in the local language.
He also admits that his local network is, at this point, quite weak. Nonetheless, after years of handling crises, Mr Kavin no longer sees anything to fear going forward.
"I am thankful for the previous hardships which helped reshape me from being a spoiled brat," he says. "I might not be equipped to handle any great pressures today if it hadn't been for the ordeal that my family went through."
