The role of women in economic reactivation around the world is fundamental. Especially in the post-COVID era, it is time for qualified and competent women to take increasingly important leadership positions and drive both organizations and businesses toward a new-normal state in which talent comes first, without any distinction in terms of gender or any other personal condition.
Pairin Atsavathawechok is one of the businesswomen who got an opportunity to lead her family business. Her story begins when the pandemic hit, and the stationery business of her family could no longer survive in the changing landscape of school and education. “With the restrictions and law enforcement from the government, the demand for stationery has decreased significantly. Simply, when all learning was done from home, teachers and students didn’t need as much stationery as usual. That is when I needed to take a leadership role for my family and found a new model of business to survive in this challenging time,” she said.
Pairin asked herself what her and her family’s passion was, as she believed that doing what one knows and is passionate about is the right way to form a new business. Ever since she was young, her family had loved salted fish and it became the family’s favorite dish.
However, she saw that cooking this dish can create lots of smoke which makes it annoying and complicated for households to produce. Thus, Rin Interfood was established to solve this problem. “From the pain point, we created ready-to-eat salted fish to make it easy for everyone who shares the same love for this menu,” she said. “Now, we are not only selling in Thailand but also expanding our business to SEA, Europe, and China. Our main target customers are Thai people living abroad who miss the taste of Thainess,” she added.
“It was a very tough and challenging time building this business from scratch, especially for someone who has never taken a leading role in business before,” she said “Thanks to the SheRise project that understands the challenges of women in business. This project helped me understand the strengths and weaknesses of my business as well as the opportunities to take the business to the next level,” said Pairin. “Joining this project not only gave me knowledge and skills in business but also the inspiration and motivation when seeing all strong women run their businesses creatively and fiercely. It made me realize that if they can do it, I can do it.”
