Meet Yol Phokasub, CEO of Thai retail giant, Central Group

Drumroll, please! We’ve just unveiled Asia’s most influential list at Inside Retail Asia, a collection of the region’s changemakers, rulebreakers and innovators. Each week, we will shine a light on the brilliant leaders who made the top 10. Here, we profile Yol Phokasub, CEO of Thai retail giant, Central Group, who came in third on the list. At a time of great global uncertainty, Yol Phokasub has driven the retail business of Central Group to major growth in sales and profitability despit

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rtainty, Yol Phokasub has driven the retail business of Central Group to major growth in sales and profitability despite Covid-19’s impact.

With him at the helm, the company is storming into Vietnam with hypermarkets and mainstream businesses, and now building a major presence in Europe with high-end department stores.

Central Retail is the retail arm of Central Group, which began in 1947 as a small family shop in Bangkok operated by Tiang Chirathivat. Today, the group has more than 3000 retail stores and food outlets.

To accommodate today’s rapidly changing consumer behaviour and digital disruption, Phokasub has developed an omnichannel ‘central economy’, synergising online and offline retail operations for customers. Some enhancements include long-distance logistics systems to improve infrastructure and an overhauled payments system with enhanced safety and security.

His extensive expertise in retail and marketing, backed by an education in computer science and software engineering, has helped bridge customers’ physical and virtual worlds, providing more intuitive and seamless shopping experiences.

Phokasub was named Asia’s Best CEO in 2021 for delivering sustainable growth, strong business strategies, and corporate social responsibility within the organisation at both the regional and global levels amidst the challenges of the pandemic.

Under his leadership, Central Retail achieved 90 per cent of its pre-Covid sales performance in March, by “thriving on steadily regaining balance during a time of challenges and uncertainties”, as he described it.

Among the group’s accomplishments this year are taking over Thai distributorship of Reebok, launching a blockchain-powered supermarket in the metaverse and expanding its Tops Market chain by opening its first standalone store concept.

Central generates an estimated 72 per cent of its revenue in Thailand, while the remainder comes from its fast-growing retail business in Vietnam and shopping centres in Italy. The company has an ambitious plan to boost revenue by 250 per cent during the next five years by investing US$3.03 billion in growth.