Observant

Observant defined as good at noticing things around a person in the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. Why are entrepreneurs observant? The difference of an entrepreneur from the others is they have a high insightful towards the society needs that remain unfulfilled. The entrepreneurs will start up a business initiative with the objective of fulfil the unfulfilled society needs and earn an optimum profits.

In Malaysia, the achievement of Air Asia airline by the founder, Tony Fernandes is a well-explained example for observant trait entrepreneur. Back to the history, the 9/11 terror attacks gave airline industry the hardest hits and economic effects around the world. However, Tony treats it as a chance for him to move into the uncertain airline industry. He was seeing the opportunity to provide flight service where the other airline cut down the flight path. The observant trait makes Tony take the first step to the route of an entrepreneur.

After that, Tony approached his intention to the former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. He suggested to Tony to take over the existing airline with zero cost which is the government-owned subsidiary that heavily indebted, instead of start from scratch. With rational thinking, this suggestion would not be taken by people. Again, Tony was seeing it could enable him to operate low-cost flight services. Thus, he used RM 1 (Ringgit Malaysia) to buy the existing airline. One year after, Air Asia had cleared all the debts.

Tony also realized the needs of Malaysian traveller that remain unfulfilled. The main obstacles for them are the expensive air fares and limited flight routes. So, he creates a tagline ‘Now everyone can fly’ with a concept of the budget no frills airline. Besides that, the largest achievement is the very first open skies agreement was brought up by Tony. The agreement contributed to the aircraft can landing on the airport of the neighbour countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines. Nowadays, Air Asia expanded the flight path widely and provides a frequent domestic flight to fulfil the needs of the citizen of the particular country. The needs of saving time and cost have been fulfilled with open up one more choice to the existing public transportation.

In additional, the one-stop centre services always preferred by the people due to the busy life become the current trend of the country. The no-frills concept inspired Tony to started hotel chains around the world. As the results, Tune Hotels was built. The passenger can searching and booking the hotel right after the tickets bought. The car rental services also provided to pick up the customer from or to the airport.

In a nutshell, the observant trait has highly contributed towards the successfulness of entrepreneurs. The history of AirAsia and Tony Fernandes had given a deep insight about the observant trait of a successful entrepreneur.