Her goal is to transform it into one of the strongest firms in the market within the next five years.

Sena Development was created by Kessara's father Theerawat in 1976. It has launched 30 projects - an average of one per year - under the brand Sena Villa around Bangkok and its suburbs.

"My father's business policy was not to focus on high growth, but on high margins. He wanted to develop quality projects for his customers. As a result, we developed only 30 projects in the 30 years we have been in business," she said, explaining why her family's company had launched fewer projects than some of its competitors.

Kessara became the director of her family's business in 2004. She had received a PhD in economics from Claremont Graduate University in the United States in 2000, and has since been working as a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Business.

Kessara said that because so many of her students at Chulalongkorn were businesspeople, she ended up picking up a lot of lessons on how to run a business. She decided to modernise her family's business holdings by consolidating their many operations into seven subsidiaries under the Sena Development umbrella.

Victory Asset Management Co Ltd, one of the seven subsidiaries, will manage Sena Development's new apartment building after it is completed next year. Three of the other subsidiaries are joint ventures.

Under Kessara's guidance, the company has also changed its revenue structure. Under the old structure, all revenue came from sales of the firm's own property projects. Now only 60 per cent of sales revenue comes from Sena Development's projects, while 30 per cent comes from joint ventures with other property developers. The remaining 10 per cent comes from rental income.

Sena Development reported sales of Bt500 million last year. It hopes to double that figure this year after hitting the Bt600-million mark in the first half. The company booked half of that in the first half and will book the rest in the second.

Sena Development is also planning to invest Bt1 billion to develop three new projects this year. Two of them will be residential projects in Rangsit, northern Bangkok, with the third an apartment building on Phaholyothin Road that is expected to start generating rent income next year.

Since Kessara became director, the company has launched 10 projects in Rangsit, worth about Bt1 billion. Three are joint projects.

The company also has enough land to develop on average three or four projects per year for the next five years, a far cry from the company's previous average of one per year. Kessara said the property market had changed a lot in the past 30 years. She said her firm now faced much stiffer competition from both local and foreign developers, which have been expanding their involvement in Thailand. In response, it has had to change its operations to reduce risk and find a more stable source of income.

When the property market cools off, Sena Development will still have rental income, while the new emphasis on joint ventures will help manage the company's risk, she said.

Meanwhile, Sena Development is also in the process of applying to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. It is increasing its registered capital to Bt700 million from Bt500 million to meet regulations. The goal is to transform Sena Development from a family-owned business into a public company by the end of this year.

"We don't need the money to develop our projects because we have enough cash to do it ourselves. However, we do want to change our image from a family-run business to a professional company. We want our management and finances to be transparent, which will strengthen our position when we negotiate with strategic partners in the future," she said.

Being listed on the stock exchange will ease future negotiations, she said.

In addition to Sena Development's purely business operations, Kessara has also launched a project called Baan Rum Farn (House of Dreams) that she hopes will give something back to society. She donates all profits from this project to Siriraj Hospital. It has already donated Bt35 million.

"We believe that business has to give back to society when it generates high income," she said.

Under her new business strategy, Kessara said she wanted to see Sena Development grow into a healthy company, both financially and in terms of the quality of the homes it sells.

"Our management policy is to manage risk and generate higher income for our shareholders and our staff by combining a new business model with the experience of our older staff, who have been working in property for more than 30 years. That is what makes us different from others," she said.

Somluck Srimalee

The Nation