One of the Successful Entrepreneurs - Tony Fernandes

Tony Fernandes

One of the successful entrepreneurs in Malaysia is Tony Fernandes. Tan Sri Anthony Francis “Tony” Fernandes was born in 30 April 1964. He is the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd. He is the entrepreneur who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia to Malaysian with the tagline “”Now everyone can fly”. Fernandes managed to turn AirAsia into a budget airline public-listed company. Forbes Asia valued Fernandes’ net worth at $650 million, ranked him at number 28 on the Forbes list of Malaysia’s Richest. He believes that someone who try their best will survive in the unprotected world. For him, being global means making bold decisions and to be global means to be competitive, ensure transparency, and be able to deal with criticism. When something is wrong, try to change what is wrong. Then focus on survival and keep growing. 

Tony Fernandes has talent in music. He is an amateur guitarist and Grade 8 pianist, Tony Fernandes also the youngest Managing Director of Warner Music Group (Malaysia). When Time Warner Inc. announced its merger with America Online Inc, Fernandes pulled the trigger and left to pursue his dream to introduce the first budget no -frills airline. He bought Air Asia with just 25 pence in September 2001. He was not competent with airlines and its various business propositions. He said “It really was a little bit of stick your finger in the air and hope for the best. But we were good marketing people from the music business, we just went out there and felt the market and said if you halve the fare, there’s an enormous untapped market.”

Tony Fernandes was sent overseas to study when he was 12 years old. He had to fend for himself from the time he arrived at Heathrow and he said that “the great thing about being thrown into deep end is you either sink or swim”. When he back home during half term, flying was too expensive to be affordable, so he set out to make it possible for everyone to fly. Air Asia is born from that and Tony Fernandes is determined to enable people in the Indian sub-continent to afford to fly with cheaply instead of spending days travelling from one city to another. Tony Fernandes started his business with a very little money and no experience in the airline industry. 

When Tony Fernandes first takeover Air Asia Company, it is a heavily indebted subsidiary. Tony Fernandes mortgaged his home and use his personal savings to buy the company. This is a big bet which if he failed at that time, he may lost everything. But he considered the risk and decided to take the challenge. After one year he made a great effort, the company had clear all the debts. Besides just an ordinary earning profit airline company, Tony Fernandes would like to make Air Asia to be known all over the world with global appeal. He has said that, he was terrified of failure not because he is afraid of failure and he rather fails than not try at all. He is not going to failed because the company takeover 300 staff who were going to lose their job if he failed. Tony Fernandes builds human capital, he hires people with the right attitude and then gives them the opportunities to earn promotions. He also believes in succession-planning and that bosses should leave and allow the new person to be the boss. “Air Asia creates individuals, not clones” he says. 

Tony Fernandes experienced fails in the ventures in Japan and Europe. Tony Fernandes says that Japan was a disaster and his partner did not understand what they want. In June 2013, Air Asia parted ways with Japan Nippon Airways (ANA) with 49% stake in Air Asia Japan to ANA. Both airlines had clashed over management and operational by losses to RM113 billion. During that time, Tony was plan to re-enter the Japanese market and he is on the lookout for financial partners.

Tony Fernandes highlight five demonstrates of entrepreneurial traits which are initiative, ability to learn from mistakes, integrity and reliability, versatility and foresight that assist him to be a successful entrepreneur in his venture. 

In the initiative traits, Tony Fernandes use the “walk around” management style to make sure that the appropriate decision can be taken immediately by gaining the experience at the workplace. He took an initiative to spend a few days in a month working in his airline as he say that he can learn a lot from there. There were one scenario when Air Asia moved the plane from 737 to the Airbus which is slightly higher off the ground, his staff told him that they need a belt loader that cost a million US dollars. At first, he refused to do so as it was costly but when he working together with his staff, he has experiences the inconvenience without belt loader when he loading the plane. Finally he makes a decision instantly to get a belt loader. If Tony Fernandes do not have initiative trait by worked together with his staffs, he would not knowing the issues and troubles that staff facing and could make a big wrong decision which will troublesome staff and influent the morale of the organization. 

In the integrity and reliability traits. Tony Fernandes show this trait by not create too much of the bureaucracy and could impede the growth of the business. This is because if the bureaucracy is too tight with the relationship between the employers and employees, it is difficult to shape and will impact to the organization and the organization will faced the problem in achieve the organization objective due to the poor communication between employers and employees. Therefore, he decided do not made the bureaucracy in his organization. So that, all the employees in his organization can free to access his office to have a discussion and needed an urgent solution. He also contribution of an ideas for the benefit of his organization and also it is well accepted. Moreover, most of the organization focus on the profit with considers their employees, but Tony Fernandes focus on the employees, followed by customer. If employer created a happy workplace to employees, they will look after every customer.

In the ability to learn from mistakes traits, Tony Fernandes is brave to face all kind of the problem that occurs in his business and he will try to solve the problem quickly. For example, when there is a confirmation authority that an Indonesian Air Asia was crashed on the way to Singapore, Tony Fernandes is not evade the responsibility. He make a good carrier on all its commitments to the passengers’ family and make a compensation payments. This clearly shows that Tony Fernandes did not evade from the problem and he is responsibility to solve the problem he faces. This ethical action have made the staff have a faith in him and cause him success in his career.

Tony Fernandes showed versatility traits as he possess many skills. He worked as an auditor at Virgin Atlantic before. Besides accounting skills, he also talent in finance which from year 1987 until 1989, he worked as a financial controller for Richard Branson in London. Tony Fernandes also has the talent in music where he is an amateur guitarist grade 8 pianist. He was a Warner Music executive in Malaysia. Moreover, Tony Fernandes was admitted as an Associated Member of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in 1991. In 2001, he purchased Air Asia and became its Chief Executive until now. With the versatility trait he possess, he has the knowledge and skills such as accounting which help him to success.

In the foresight traits, the success of Tony Fernandes is come from the decision of him bought the AirAsia in 2001. Instead of start building over new company, Tony Fernandes bought an existing airline which at that time, AirAsia was losing money and got a lots of debt. He took many effort to enhance AirAsia. One year after his takeover, AirAsia had cleared all its debts. Tony Fernandes has turn the company from heavily-indebt company become profitable, producing a profit and launching new routes from first its hub in Kuala Lumpur until all over the ASEAN with lower price ticket, thus, it attracted a lot of people to flight with AirAsia. He show foresight attributes which he make AirAsia become one of the successful and biggest Airline Company in Malaysia.

As a conclusion, Tony Fernandes is a successful entrepreneur. He is a brilliant leader which has his owned way for leading people. He is also a successful leader. For a leader it is quite difficult for making a good communication or connects with employees, but Tony Fernandes make it easy. The ways he use to deal with different problem is good and bring a lot of success. He encourages a workplace that satisfies and motivates his employees to continue striving for excellence. Moreover, Tony Fernandes also think that patient is very important to be success. To become a successful entrepreneur we need to try hard. A successful entrepreneur cannot do it by itself.