By Susan Cunningham
Digital News Asia
October 20, 2015
- Grabbing enterprise mindshare, confident it has ‘infinite revenue potential’
- 21-yr-old CEO, scion of Thai business family, insists startup made it on its own
WHEN Korawad Chearavanont, who just turned 21, landed US$5.7 million in August from Shanghai’s Gobi Partners to develop his messaging app, it seemed like the proverbial startup blowing up from nowhere.
Or like yet another silver spoon kid hopping the express lane to the CEO chair.
Korawad’s grandfather is Dhanin Chearavanont, billionaire founder and chairman of the multinational Charoen Pokphand (CP) conglomerate and one of the richest people in Asia. His father is CEO (chief executive officer) and president of CP’s listed telecoms group, True Corp.
In fact, the Eko app for large companies has evolved in failures and starts over nine years. Korawad built the first version in basic HTML as a mobile social network for high school students when he was in the seventh grade at an international school in Bangkok.
The app had gone through several more iterations and launches by 2011 when he was a junior at Lawrenceville, a boarding high school in New Jersey. MORE
Susan J Cunningham 