Thai venture rings Nasdaq bell
Siam Organic Team, a group of master's students from the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University, recently became the first Thai group ever to ring the closing bell at Nasdaq, one of the world's largest stock exchan
Siam Organic was founded by five MBA students: Peetachai Dejkraisak, Pradeep Akkunoor, Nithipong Durongwattana, Pornthida Wongphatharakul and Apilux Huvanandana. The team won the "mai Bangkok Business Challenge 2011", a global business-plan competition hosted in Bangkok at the beginning of this year.
The team also won the Stu Clark Investment Competition organised by the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and this victory brought a cash prize of 20,000 Canadian dollars (Bt613,186) and an invitation to ring the closing bell at Nasdaq.
The team's products are nutritious organic and natural foods. Its flagship product, called Jasberry, is a new variety of high-antioxidant rice that is cross bred from Thai jasmine rice and Thai black rice.
Acknowledging the role that Thailand's most prestigious business school has played in their success, Siam Organic Team's leader Peetachai Dejkraisak said the team received all the support possible from Sasin and its director, Professor Toemsakdi Krishnamra.
"Our advisor and mentor Nick Pisalyaput, himself an entrepreneur, chipped in with several leads and valuable advice," he said. "The several business-plan competitions that we took part in helped us to refine our strategy and to understand investor expectations, and most importantly, helped us accelerate the time to market for this product."
