A woman of substance
Panatda Chennavasin’s bold moves led her to become the first and only Thai female board member of Isuzu Motors and Mitsubishi Corporation.
Panatda
“Moo” Chennavasin thinks the brain is not divided by gender. Today, women are often ahead and it’s no longer a man’s world. Mrs Panatda’s new role as executive vice-president of Tri Petch Isuzu Sales, a local distributor of Isuzu trucks, is a case in point. She is the first and only Thai female on the executive board of Isuzu Motors and Mitsubishi Corporation, Isuzu’s largest shareholder.
The road to her prestigious management position had not been a smooth one, though. In 1977, after graduating with honours from Thammasat University’s Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, she applied for a job as an accountant at Tri Petch Isuzu, only to be told that the position was reserved for a male employee.
She was furious.
“I called the Japanese executives directly and asked them why the position was for men only,” she says. “I asked them bluntly why my qualifications and competency should be second to men,” she recalls.
She admits it was a reckless thing to do but she was young and naive. But her courage paid: she got the job.
In the same year, Mrs Panatda made another bold move — she asked for temporary leave to pursue a master’s degree on international trade at Hitotsubashi University under the Japanese government’s scholarship programme.
The Japanese government offered scholarships only to those who wanted to pursue an academic career.
With her confidence and plain-spoken personality and her prudent response at the interview that the private sector was in a better position to represent Japan in Thailand, she became the first non-academic to be awarded a full scholarship.
Working as a team was the highest achievement for the company and gender was barely an issue. PANATDA CHENNAVASIN EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT OF TRI PETCH ISUZU SALES CO
During the period in Japan, Mrs Panatda did not just study at the university. She also found a part-time job at NHK, Japan’s largest broadcasting organisation, where she worked for four years. After graduation, she also worked as a trainee at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Isuzu Motors, Mitsubishi Corporation and Dai-Ichi Kikaku in Tokyo.
Life as an accountant after that did not hold much attraction for her. “I told myself that I no longer wanted to work as an accountant once I came back to Tri Petch Isuzu Sales in 1985. So I moved to the sales division,” she says.
According to Mrs Panatda, Thailand’s automotive industry between 1978 and 1987 was booming, with robust domestic sales and strong investment from Japan following the government’s ambitious strategy to establish Thailand as a vehicle production hub in order to reduce completely built-up unit imports.
After Isuzu’s Tokyo-based parent company set up its first facility in Thailand in 1966, Isuzu pickup trucks became well-known among Thais and have continued to be popular.
Mrs Panatda’s first challenge at Isuzu’s sales division was to introduce the new pickup truck type — the semi cab (space cab) in 1985 on the heels of the popular single cab model.
“Before the space cab launch, our marketing team dominated by men had conducted a survey asking potential buyers’ perception to evaluate whether the new model was acceptable to them, and 70% of them loved it,” she said.
Her marketing team also did a similar survey before the introduction of the new double cab model and pickup passenger vehicle, which enjoyed very strong local sales.
“Working as a team was the highest achievement for the company and gender was barely an issue,” Mrs Panatda says.
With Isuzu’s high sales, she was promoted to division manager in 1993, general manager in
1997 and director in 2001.
Thanks to government support, pickup trucks enjoyed a host of incentives, such as import tariff waivers for auto parts and vehicle excise tax cuts. The perfect market environment also drew new investment in car and parts manufacturing.
The period between 1988 and
1997 was a golden era for pickup trucks, which were promoted as the country’s product champion for sales not only for the domestic market but also for export worldwide.
Isuzu decided to move its production hub from Japan to Thailand, which is now the second largest manufacturer for Isuzu after the US.
Mrs Panatda, a mother of two, says the challenges never cease, although the pickup truck segment is quite mature now, with
2.8 million units sold in Thailand as of June.
New challenges include her attempts to change the perception of local drivers to go for more environmentally-friendly technology with a small diesel engine.
“Thai buyers have long been familiar with a big engine size for high performance,” she says.
“Isuzu’s current technology runs on a smaller diesel engine of 1.9 litres, down from 2.5-3 litres in earlier models.”
Isuzu has been producing smaller engines since November 2015 to meet the new vehicle excise tax that came into force earlier this year.
The new tax is based on carbon dioxide emissions, E85-gasohol compatibility and fuel efficiency instead of engine size.
The structure encourages manufacturers to make vehicles compatible with E85 and produce eco-cars at reasonable prices.
The new tax regime sees passenger cars with CO2 emissions of 150 grammes per kilometre or below subject to a 30% excise tax, those with 150-200g/km at 35% and more than 200g/km at 40%. Cars with E85-gasohol compatibility will be charged less than 5% excise tax for each carbon emission level.
Eco-cars are required to emit less than 100g/km, lowering their tax rate to 12-14% from 17%.
The most affected segments are likely to be large pickups, passenger cars, pickup passenger vehicles and sport-utility vehicles, which normally have high emissions.
Isuzu reported sales rose 3.3% for the first seven months of the year to 82,593 units. It expects to end this year with 127,800-129,600 units sold.
Isuzu marked its highest ever sales in 2012, up 61.4% from 2011 to 213,380 vehicles, fuelled by the previous government’s first-time car buyer scheme
Sales fell by 3.3% to 206,233 vehicles in 2013 and by 22.3% to 160,286 vehicles in 2014.
Last year, it posted 144,295 vehicles sold, down by 10%.
Tri Petch Isuzu has also recently started tapping into Laos and Cambodia, aiming to boost its market share in both countries from the current 2% each to 10% by 2018 and 30% by 2020.
Annual sales of pickup trucks in Laos and Cambodia are estimated at 10,000 and 2,500 units, respectively.
“My ambition right now is to expand our pickup truck sales to buyers in Indochina,” Mrs Panatda says. “Laos may be much easier for Isuzu, while Cambodia would be tougher because they prefer used vehicles.”