Fly on Corporate Wall

Boonchai Bencharongkul has earned his place in Thai business history chronicles as the founder of Dtac, but he’d really rather be remembered as an art patron or a philanthropist. There is just one thing, though. He wants it clear that he was the one who introduced mobile phones to Thailand, not Thaksin Shinawatra.
You old-timers will remember those bulky Motorola phones. Boonchai calls them “dog bones”. His family started doing business with Motorola in radio communications, but it was Boonchai, who wasn’t yet fully involved, who first noticed the rise of the cell-phone.
He was pursuing his interest in art at Northern Illinois University in the US (living large too, ensconced in a seven-bedroom house and driving a sports car). Come the summer holidays, Dear Old Dad got him a trainee’s job at Motorola to gain some experience.
“I went in dressed nicely and they told me to wear jeans the next day,” Boonchai tells Hello magazine. “I was puzzled – until they told me my first job was to sweep the floor!” Shocked, he found himself uttering the immortal words of all sons of Thai big shots: “Do you know who my father is?!”
Yes, replied his supervisor. “He’s the one who assigned you the job.”
At some point pushing the broom, Boonchai spotted the prototype of the “dog bone”. He proposed the cellular-phone concept to the old Telephone Organisation of Thailand. “I thought everyone would want one in his car. And today there are 80 million mobile phones in Thailand!”
Before we thank Boonchai for being on the ball, though, he hastens to give the credit to his parents, saying they taught him all he knows about business and life. “When I came back from the US, my dad sent me out as an insurance salesman, which also taught me how to persuade people.”
Okay, thanks Boonchai and his folks and Benchachinda Holdings for Dtac and the phones. Now can we mention his contribution to Thai art? Remember that it’s Boonchai who’s built the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bangkok with his own money. He’d rather hear people talking about that than his drawn-out battles with Thaksin and the government over mobile networks.

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