Energized

Petch Osathanugrah is amping up his family’s 128-year-old energy drinks company Osotspa.

- Ron Gluckman

Petch Osathanugrah is a walking, talking advertisement for M-150, the energy drink his family’s company Osotspa sells and that is No. 1 in Thailand by sales. At 64, there seems little Petch hasn’t already done: A once chart-topping rocker, occasional film actor and advertising executive, Petch remains a fixture in Bangkok’s live-music scene, a university president and—if that wasn’t enough—a major arts patron, with a collection so vast he claims to have lost count, but that includes works by Picasso and Damien Hirst. Oh, he’s building a museum, too.

As Osotspa’s dynamo CEO, however, Petch is tackling a different challenge: that few outside Thailand have ever heard of, much less tried, M-150 or Osotspa’s other products. Petch aims to change that by ramping up Osotspa’s footprint abroad, starting in neighboring markets such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. In the process, he’s transforming one of Thailand’s oldest companies from a family run pharmaceutical firm into a modern consumer-products multinational. “This is my vision,” says Petch, “to go from one of the oldest companies in Thailand and transform it into one of the most modern.”

Last October, Petch led 128-year-old Osotspa in the country’s biggest IPO of the year, raising a $464 million war chest for expansion by selling a roughly 20% stake that valued the company at $2.3 billion. Osotspa’s stock has since gained a quarter in value, boosting the Osathanugrah family’s 64% holding to roughly $1.9 billion, pushing its overall net worth up by 30% from the year before and vaulting it up four places to eighth on our annual list of Thailand’s richest.