Tan Sri Tony Fernandes: A visionary entreprenuer

           

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes
Source: asianentrepreneur.org

         One of the traits that an entreprenuer must have is visionary. The meaning of visionary is thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom. To be more precise, a person with visionary trait has the power to predict how a society, industry or country will become in the future. This trait can be seen in Tan Sri Tony Fernades where he has an imaginative ideas and long-range experience for his several companies. When he was a child, he has dreamt of three wonderful things which are operating an airline, owning an English football and Formula One racing team.
         
           Tony Fernandes' vision has turned AirAsia to be one of the famous and well-recognised airlines brands in the world. Many observers are proud of the success of AirAsia all thanks to the responsibility and strong leadership of Tony Fernandes. Back to the time in 2011, Tony Fernandes met up with our fourth Prime Minister. Tun Dr, Mahatir Mohamad. At that time, Dr. Mahatir Mohamad has persuaded Tony Fernandes to buy over a previous airline, AirAsia which was in high debt/

              Thus, Tony Fernandes bought AirAsia at a lowest price of 25 pence in September 2001 by mortgaging his house and spent all his long savings to get hold of the company and transfigure it into an industry player(Channel). Tony Fernandes took over AirAsia in 2001 and during that time, the airline had only two planes and millions of debt. Year 2001 appeared to be a hard time to join the airline industry but Tony Fernandes, CEO of AirAsia insisted on doing so and has risked all he can to reintroduce an aging and indebted airline that he has bought for only 25 pence.

               Apart from this, Tony Fernandes did not have any existing experience in the industry but still he has joined with other teams together to buy over the airline even though he has to mortgaged his house. He made a dream when he was sleeping in his office at Kuala Lumpur's airport of re-introducing AirAsia as a successful budget airline(Suisse). As a result, the AirAsia company had doubled from only two planes to a fleet of 86 planes in order to fly 30 million of people from one destination to another around the world. Tony Fernandes did a great job when he planned to develop the low cost airline on 11 September 2001 as he thought that it will be awesome to be able to help those poort families to travel around the world. This enables them to save on their money and time.

                The implementation and introduction of the low cost airline is only one of the successes that Tony Fernandes manged to gain. Till now, AirAsia has become one of the famous and well-recognised budget airlines in the world (Business, 2010). This example has shown us that Tony Fernandes has managed to achieve his dreams with his visionary trait although he faced with a heavily debt's business in the beginning and able to re-launch AirAsia into a profitable airlines.

                   By looking at Fernandes's achievements of running an airline, this shows that he has visionary trait where each of every entreprenuer should have and has achieved awards for the award of 'Visionaries & Leadership Series' for his fantastic work in AirAsia ( Wikipedia, 2016). Moreover, he also dates to dream big when he was only three years old. Like what Fernandes has quoted, "believe the unbelievable, dream the impossible and don't take no for an answer'.

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes: An open culture Airasia corporate environment

          The success of being the world’s leading low-cost airline is not only the fruitful effort from Tan Sri Tony Fernandes and his team, but also the working culture Tony stemmed ever since he started to run AirAsia airlines. He stresses over openness, innovation and a never-say-die attitude, thus, he practises open culture in the working environment.

In the physical working places of AirAsia, the management department do their work on a huge stage in an open space office with only few physical barriers between desks. Moreover, in the reception area, there is a flight attendant team where the chief pilots deserve for a corner desk monitoring the operation team. It is a sign of respecting the pilots are part of the team where they have their own physical space in the company even though their main responsibility is flying the plane. Although Tony is the CEO of AirAsia, that does not make him much different on his working space. His office is set up at the heart of the company with no walls or doors surrounded. Tony sees his team members in the office and so do them. The cafeteria is also another feature to be mentioned where it is set up for every single people in the team including trainee, captain and ground handling staff. This is to expose them to have interaction with each other regardless of working position. (Ghandour, 2012)      

A snapshot of AirAsia Headquarter at Sepang District, Malaysia.

Source: business.inquirer.net

            Tony encourages the employee to use their first name on the name cards with no titles at all. Instead of conforming to preconceived concept on the duty of cabin crew, Tony pushes them to develop their own personality. He looks every employee valuable in running the operation. Anyone inside or outside the corporate either, can walk up to Tony even just for a high-five or providing their opinion or suggestion or maybe just grumble about football. This makes Tony to be open and easily involved on every issue the employee or even the consumers discuss about in order to keep innovating in the industry. The informal culture helps in keeping the internal operating cost down since AirAsia is a low-cost carrier. (Govindasamy, 2009)

There is no such hierarchy in the corporate as well as the commitment to job flexibility, its culture and management style reflect Tony Fernandes’s personality as informal, friendly and cheerful. He uses his personal style in creating a unique identity for Air Asia. It is also evident based on his usual dressing with a coordinate of jeans, open-neck shirt and the signature Air Asia red coloured base-ball cap, visible even during working hour in the company. It is ultimately to provide clear and precise interaction under Air Asia’s unstuffy and open culture. (Grant, 2015)

Photo shows are the look of Tony’s office in Malaysia.

Source: business.inquirer.net

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes: An observant entreprenuer

Tony Fernandes has the trait of observant because he use less than 1 dollar to purchase of a bankrupt company and start his airline empire. He are the “vanguard” of the low-cost air travel. AirAsia start operate in January 2002 from 2 planes that from a bankrupt company  to more than 180 of national airlines. Anyway, Fernandes not only focus on airfare but also start a hotel chain and offers car rental (Ng, 2014).

AirAsia can be the internet company, he said. The traditional distribution channels are expensive, therefore the tickets sell through websites will bring down their costs. AirAsia are trying to sell ancillary goods and services which are not included airfare. For example, checked-in baggage(not handcarry), preferred seating, in-flight meals, WiFi, rental car bookings through airasia main website, hotel through airasiago website and redemption of miles through airasiabig website(Balea, 2015). He said: “We expect ancillary income, such as from these additional online services, to contribute to our bottomline.” (TTG Asia Media Pte Ltd, 2005).

AIRASIA has partnership with the car rental business named GoCar, in a partnership with Asian Rent-A-Car which is a subsidiary of Scomi Group. It offered at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Senai International Airport, Penang and Kuantan. The rates of car rental start at RM30 (US$8) per day (TTG Asia Media Pte Ltd, 2005).

            Air Asia has cooperated with many hotels around Asia Country and create an icon of “flight+hotel” on Air Asia official website to allow their customer which to made hotel booking. This system help the travellers to save time because they can reserve for the hotel accommodation after they book a flight but also can book a hotel without make any flight reservation In Air Asia official website which have icons “flight+hotel” and “hotel”, both will direct proceed to AirAsiaGo webpage. Hotel that booked through the website have the lowest price guarantee.

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes: Failure is an option

           Apart from this, Tony Fernandes has the traits of failure is an option. This can be seen in 2011, Tony Fernandes who the successful Malaysia airline entrepreneur in Malaysia is the new majority owner of Queens Park Rangers Football Club having bought the whole of Bernie Ecclestone's 66% stake in the club for around £35m. Conn David (2011) mentioned that, Tony wishes to be involved in football and create a football club and turn it from raw diamond into diamond. Queen Park Ranger (QPR) is the best raw diamond. He wants the fans to be proud of what they're doing and be involved as much as they can.

Queens Park Rangers Football Club (QPR) is a one of the famous English football club in White City, London that play in The Championship or it also called as the second tier of English football. QPR achieved in winning the League Cup in 1967 and being runners-up in the old First Division in 1975–76. Besides, they were reaching the final of the FA Cup in 1982, where they lost 1–0 to Tottenham Hotspur in a replay after they drew 1–1 in the initial final match.

During Tony became the majority owner of QPR, QPR was in English Premier League (EPL) season 2011-2012. QPR was playing their fifth season in EPL, and they success finished the season in 17^th place which compete with other football clubs. If they are lower than 17^th place, they will be delegation to the Championship. In EPL season 2012-2013, QPR unfortunately delegated to The Championship after drawing with Reading Football Club. Starting from season 2013-2014 until now, QPR still not able to promote to EPL. Although QPR is still not getting promote to EPL, Tony still believes that one day QPR will be success to get the champion.

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes: An open risk taker

There is a myth that entrepreneurs are risk taking investors. It should be clarified that entrepreneurs take calculated risk which is affordable by themselves and the organizations or business. Tan Sri Dr. Anthony Francis Fernandes has the entrepreneur trait as an open risk taker. Being a successful entrepreneur, he has initiated the Tune Group of companies by purchasing  AirAsia on 2 December 2001. Tune Group is a leisure and entertainment corporation having a mission to provide affordable leisure, initially in Asian markets. The group is now mainly trading on  airways, hotel and telecommunication services. (About Us)

Ever since the rising of technology usage in daily life, telecommunication industry is having a keen competition among service providers. Tony Fernandes is taking a high risk to enter the industry with Tune Talk, playing the role of Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). (Tune Talk Sdn. Bhd. )

Tune Talk is meeting an ever increasing demand for affordable yet high-quality telecommunication service. To provide high quality service, Tune Talk cooperates with premier telecommunication provider, Celcom (Malaysia) Berhad by signing an agreement enabling Tune Talk to ride on the extensive network of Celcom and reduce the cost of building and maintaining cellular network. (Tune Group, 2016) From this agreement, we can see how Tony Fernandes take the risk for Tune Talk to continue compete in the market.

The telecommunication industry has been penetrated by several main network providers; they are Maxis, Digi, Celcom, Hotlink and others. To compete with these experienced providers, Tune Talk needs to introduce more affordable and attractive promotion packages with more benefit for subscribers at a lower cost. Tony Fernandes has made use of the benefits to be provided by Tune Group to attract more consumers to subscribe to Tune Talk, such as AirAsia Traveller plan which provide roaming service for overseas travellers and collect AirAsia Big Points with Tune Talk subscriptions and top up. (Tune Talk Sdn. Bhd. )

Beside reducing operating cost and concentrate on developing great promotion packages to subscribers, Tune Talk also tried to employ efficient web-based technologies to better serve their customers. Although entering the telecommunication industry is a high risk act but Tony Fernandes has been a good example of open risk taker entrepreneur that takes the risk for better development in telecommunication industry.