Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Air Asia Founder Talks Childhood Dreams | #Endgame ft. Tony Fernandes (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

From boarding school to the boardroom, the founder of Asia's largest low-cost airline, Tony Fernandes, was an ambitious little boy. Many little stories and life events left an indelible impression on Tony, who is on a lifelong mission to level the playing field and take the ASEAN brand to a whole new altitude.

But it's all about timing, man. It's not about the right idea. Yeah. Correct. So I left and I joined the morning music. And you know the first guy to call me up when I started Air Asia was Richard Branson. Wow. He said, hey, I thought it was a stupid idea to start an airline. This is N-game. Hi, we're here today we're in today,

we're coming Tony Fernandez, founder of Air Asia, who's been able to be 19 years and Air Asia has been never banged more than 600 million people over during the last year and today we're going to

talk about the latter blacking Tony and what name is sepac derjang Tony now and to to the time. Hey Tony, thanks a lot for coming out to our podcast, end game. I know it's busy, but

you know, it's a real honor to have you on board. Thank you, man. Congratulations on your new podcast, and glad you finally made it. Thanks. I want to dig deep a little bit about your, you know, how you started out. You were born on the 30th of

April, 1964, which makes you a tourist. And the last few days, we've been interviewing, coincidentally, people that are tourists. Do you believe in Horoscope? Not really, but most people in Asia do. And they seem to like Torians. And they like the fact that I was born in the Year of the Dragon. So I use it where it helps.

Good, good, good. But, you know, when you read the characteristics of a Torian or someone who's born in the Year of the Dragon, There is a lot of similarity to my personality. Which is what? Which is never giving up. Stubborn. You know, aggressive, you know, loving people and dreaming. Those kind of areas.

Yeah, yeah. You know, lots of successful people started out with a dream. And you started out with a real big dream about, you know, unifying and uniting, you know, you know, ASEAN people. That was really cool. Yeah, I mean, I always, you know, everyone in America and Europe talks about China and India, but they forgot about this amazing region called ASEAN,

where we have 700 million people, incredible cultural diversity, incredible tourism product, and amazing food. I really think probably the best food in the world. if you look at Indonesia and Thai, you know, it's incredible stuff. And so, but no one talked about ASEAN. And I thought, what an incredible market if we could bring it closer together.

And that's been my lifelong dream from, you know, I was involved in a basketball league, the ASEAN basketball league. I've dreamt about an ASEAN football league, which has got nowhere. And, you know, people have talked about an ASEAN World Cup. But what I think I have done a little bit is brought Asian closer together through Eurasia. Yeah, that would be awesome if we can get an ASEAN World Cup. But did you play a lot of soccer when you were a kid? Yeah, I know hard to you to believe in my body right now.

I've seen recent photos of you playing soccer, but I'm just curious if you actually played soccer when you're... I know, I did. It was my passion. I love football, as I call it. I'll call it football for your sake. Being American, stroke Indonesian. It was my passion from eight years old. I got a massive cultural shock when I went to my boarding school in England.

And I thought, wow, these posts look a little bit bigger than a normal goal post. And my father, my father never told me that, um, that the school I went to didn't play football. It was rugby. So that was a massive blow to me. But football was my dream. I played a very high standard in Malaysia. I played for Malaysian school boys. No kidding.

Wow. Yeah, it was, well, I was very young, under 15 at the time. Okay. Probably more fit too, right? Yeah. You know, I never have been incredibly fit guys. I was very much, you know, I used to slack in training. And I was always in a position where, in the days I played anyway, you didn't have to track back as much.

So I played center forward. So I was a bit of a slacker. I think in today's football, I would have been thrown out a long time ago. You mean you never wanted to be a striker? I was a striker. Oh, a center striker. Oh, center forward. Okay, I got you.

I got you. Center forward. Yeah. I was a center forward and, you know, but all those dreams came crashing when I was sent to boarding school, which were they only played rugby. Tell me about your experience at a boarding school in the UK. I know you went there early enough. Yeah, I went when I was 13. I had never been to England.

Okay. And one day my father tells me I'm going to school in England. It seemed an interesting concept and behold. Lo and behold, I was off to the airport one day. At those days it was a small airport, Subang Airport, which was still in existence. And this is before terrorism and all these things, so people could wave to you from the balcony. The village came to see me off. I was wearing my school uniform.

I felt very cool. I had an unaccompanied minors badge on me and I had my samsonite bag full of the standard Malaysian things of Maggie Mi and You know sambal etc and It felt very cool the coolness started to wear off when I got on the plane Which was a Qantas airways and in those days to get to let's have taken forever to get to London It did take forever. Yeah stopped in Bangkok Bahrain Frankfurt and

than London. And when I arrived in London, it was like, wow, the first thing I thought was God, everyone's white here. I never seen so many white people in my life before. And he drove in the late 70s, this was in 1947, was still a huge airport.

Right. And I told my daughter, you have no such problem now, but when you get to England, everyone's Indian. So, white people should probably feel alien when they get to London now. And then my father was a little bit of a mommy's boy, which I was.

And so he didn't let anyone meet me at the airport. He wanted me to find my own way to Epsom College. So I came out of Heathrow Airport, had to find my way to a bus station. Green line bus, I remember it so well. And the bus number was 727, which, you know, is all about planes, right? 727 that route was a plane 727 that took me to Epson and I arrived they dropped me at a pub which is very appropriate in that part of my life the bus stop was outside her pub and I got out and I had to walk to school from downtown Epson right and I first experienced this girl comes up

to me and she's a skinhead you know she's wearing she's wearing her DM boots She puts a hand in front of me And it has a spostika Oh, okay Yeah, no, it has a just kind of like She wanted to show me, she had a swastika Oh my God And I didn't know, I thought it was some English greeting

So I went oh, hello And I didn't realize that she was a skin And basically telling me You know, it kind of looks like something You would see in some parts of India Yeah, yeah, correct I mean, I mean, I did know what the swastika is But I didn't realize what she stood for

Right, I didn't know that. At that point in the UK, the national front was growing. This would have been in the what? The mid-70s or late 70s? Yeah, yeah, late 70s. Oh, my God. And so I walked up to my school and I thought, Jesus Christ, what have I done wrong in my life?

This looks like a prison camp. You know, from a nice house in Kholonpur, Upper Middle Class family, it was a real, a real kind of, wow. what a shock. We lived in a kind of dormitory, 15 beds, cold showers, being bullied, you know, the whole thing. I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about it more, but I loved it, and I think it was the making of me. I'm sure the cold showers were the ones that inspired you to set up Aura Asia back then. Yeah, exactly. Actually, there is a story around that later on I'll tell you, But yeah, it was a real baptism of fire.

I remember the first, you can imagine this right, late 70s, I'm the only brown boy in my house. And there were a few day boys there. And then one weekend, they all went to someone's house, which the bad guy became my best friend, but he didn't invite me. And I was like, oh, why can't invite me? And racism and all these things don't come into my mind.

Later on, I discovered, as we got very close. He didn't invite me because he thought people in Malaysia lived in a tree house and that he thought I wouldn't know how to use my knife and fork so he didn't want to embarrass me.

So lots of funny stories turning up for my first meal in the school cafeteria. I remember my father telling me that I had to eat everything they put in front of me and I saw the menu on the board and they said towed in the hole. And I thought, oh my God, I feed a frog.

But it was actually Yorkshire pudding in a sausage. Oh, my God. And the first time I got punished was I was late for a lesson. And the master said to me, pull your socks up. So I did. And he thought I was being cheeky. So lots of little stories like that. But I had a great time at school.

How long were you in boarding school? Five years. And how often did your parents visit you? or they made you come back to Malaysia to visit yeah I came back to Malaysia I had my first holiday sort of three months after I arrived in Christmas and and then Easter and summer and then it got less and less to like once a year wow hey hey your dad was from Goa I saw yeah yeah I've been I've been to that place you know I used to live in India for three years oh did you that's that's a

real fun place. Yeah, yeah, lots of cash-a-night wine, lots of hippies, lots of drugs. I'm sure you didn't do any of that, Gita. No, no, no, no. That was a long time ago. But I want to ask you, who would have had a better influence or more influence on you? Your mom or your dad? I pay my mom my dad was a fantastic guy they were very very opposite my father was a doctor okay he was

very learned very conservative my mom was a rock and roll rebel she was a music teacher wow that became a business woman and my father was very left wing

he didn't believe in private medicine and my mother was she'd sell ice to an eskimo. So, you know, it was an amazing childhood, but had such contrasting parents. Was she tough on you? No, not really. If I was a one-legged footballer, she'd still think I was Pelle. Well, my father was completely tough on me. I remember we were playing the Japanese team, Japanese national team, and, you know, we were winning like 6-0 at half-time, and I had

scored like five goals, and I thought, today, he can't criticize me. Imagine like you're 12 years old, right? And he comes up and I think, oh, he's going to say, well done to me. And he says, God, you're a real hog. You haven't passed the ball once to your teammates. It was like demonstrating to me. Man, I was captain of the team. But that was just my dad.

That's tough. He's got to be tough on you. He went to boarding school when he was five. Oh, my God. He was tough in me. My mom was quite the opposite. So it was a nice balance. But I say that my, I mean, both parents had an enormous.

impact on my life, as I think most people will say. My father obviously gave me a lot of my political views. And my mother very much gave me the belief of motivation and the power of people and the power of belief that you can do anything. She was never afraid to take on a challenge. And she wasn't educated at the highest level, but she would never be afraid of taking on the challenge. and that, she left a very indelible mark on me. My mom passed away when I was quite young. Sorry to hear that. Yeah, quite a tough time for me when she did,

because you never believe it's going to happen. I was in boarding school. I was 15. You know, I had become in love with rugby, and I was playing hockey and cricket. And, you know, I was okay. I was a competent sportsman. But after she passed away,

I suddenly became this amazing hockey player. and so much faster. It really affected me when she, coming back to Malaysia for the first time after she had gone, she was the life and soul of the house. And it became very tough. But my whole life has been up and down

with travesty and disasters. And I'm living through one right now in COVID. But there's always a silver lining in this. I've always taken this. view that you know can't cry about it she's just going to go out there and fix it and be positive and there will always be something out there right well we'll all pull through you know every you're not you're not unique you know everybody's going through the top time yeah and look i i you strike me as more of a right winger but your dad was a left winger how's that yeah yeah i i'm right

dead center um you know i think if there's a if there's a definition of a caring capitalist then, you know, you know, I believe in the capitalist system. I believe in rewards. But I believe that education, health, should be available to everyone. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, these are basic human rights. Yeah.

Now, I'm not saying you don't, you shouldn't, if someone wants to go to a private school and they can afford it, go ahead. Sure. If someone wants to go to a private hospital and can afford it, go ahead. big because that takes the burden off the state system. But it shouldn't be that the private system is so much better than the state system. I think Sweden's got it kind of right. So I don't believe in high taxation. I think there are better ways of doing it. But I, you know, I think capitalism is an only way. Left wing systems have shown

to not get the desired results. Right. Everything, you know, education. education system under the labor government. Everything went down. The grammar school system was destroyed. But then again, the grammar school was also a little bit of litus. So there's a balance somewhere along the line. And so yeah, I believe in market policies. Why I believe there should be wealth redistribution. Isn't it kind of a mockery that, you know, education used to be a non-profit good. Now it becomes so much of a luxury good, right? For most. Yeah.

Yeah. Even the private schools before used to be the money went back into the school. Correct. Right. It wasn't dividends and private companies running them and stuff. So I find that a bit weird. That's the free market, I suppose. You can't have.

Yeah. But the state should not run away from their obligations. Sure. I believe you. Because the biggest asset in the country is the people. Yep. I think we've been very successful in Eurasia because we flattened the socioeconomic scene. I've said that I don't care where you came from.

Whether you came from Opsbridge or Harvard or you left school at 13. Everyone is level with me. And if you have a brain, but you weren't able to fully use it because you didn't have the right economic incentives to go to a private school or to go to university because you had to feed your parents. at Eurasia, we'll level that. So we have boys and girls who joined us to carry bags and check-in assistance for pilots now. We have telephone operators who are CEOs. And that is, if there's one thing that I leave, I've left the culture that people believe in Air Asia, they can do anything they want to do. And that is my single biggest success factor.

Yeah, I'm with you, man. I'm with, hey, let's go back to your early, scholastic days you went on to London School of Economics you studied and got out with an accounting degree who convinced you to study accounting yeah I had no choice actually I did very badly it's amazing you said scholastic I see you as a typical scholastic person no I'm not you know well at college I didn't join the Malaysian Singapore's sides to, right? I was like, hey, I'm going to live with you guys for the rest of your lives. I want to meet other people. It was all they ever did was hang around with each other and go to

tram and nightclub. I'm with you. Yeah. And go to Lester Square. I saw the same damn thing, man, when I was in the US. Yeah. I tried to be outside that community. Yeah. Once in a while. I was outside, but I unfortunately enjoyed college life too much. And, you know, I always said to my dad, didn't quite share the same view as me. college and universities about living and experiencing and finding what life's all about and I don't care whether I get a first or a third or just barely scraped through which I barely scrape through by the way and you know it's a degree it doesn't mean I'm any smart through a dumber but I said I want to be

street smart I want to learn about business I want to learn about people I want to learn all that. So I had a lot of fun in university, but I learned a lot as well. And then when I did so badly, my father said, either you do accountancy or you come back. So I thought, okay, do accountancy. And I hated it. It was the worst time in my life. But I passed everything first time because I just hated it so much. And you know, you can pass accounting exams. and you don't actually understand accountancy. So my first job, I didn't know how to do or credit.

I was calling my girlfriend saying, hey, where did you put the debit? Where would you put the credit right? And I passed everything. So let's say something about accounting exams. But it's like driving. Did you take the charter accountant?

Certified. Certified. Chartered certified. Okay. So that was kind of one level below in England anyway. The Chartered was seen as the Division 1. The elite, okay.

Yeah. They gave me one actually about seven years ago. Just an honorary. All I had to do was fill up some points. That's pretty damn good. Yeah, I know. So I became a chartered accountant without taking the exams. If you had wanted to study political science, would your parents have let you?

No. I wanted to. Okay. How do you know that? I would have loved to have. political science. I look, if I got into a super duper Oxford University or something, which I had zero chance of getting and the only, and I said it was political science, I'm sure my father would have

said okay, but no, I've always loved, it's funny you ask that question. You would have done well, man, I read you. Yeah, I would have loved to study political science. I'd love to be a politician, to be honest. Hey, I can see that as your end game. in a big way. I can see you running a big country. Yeah. Better stop that subject right now. We can cut that out if you want.

But okay, then you got out. Then you worked in the music industry, right? As an auditor, version of Atlantic. Yeah, well, I started as an accountant in an accounting firm for about three months. Okay. as an auditor, it was mind-blowing. It was really mind-blowing. I had the toughest, toughest part of that job was filling up. You had to fill up every 15 minutes of your time sheet. And when you're doing nothing, it was really tough. So a lot of clients got charged for nothing really. And, you know, I used to be listening to cricket. I used to bunk off

and watch the test match. And I thought this is not for me. And, And I've always been that kind of awesome. I can't do something I don't enjoy. So I wrote to every record company. They all told me to go to hell except one, which was virgin. Which is a hell of a company at that time. Still is. Yeah.

I went to the interview and they rejected me as well. And I was walking out of the interview and Richard Branson was walking in. And I thought, okay, do I be a shy Malaysian and just smoke? No kidding. Oh, my God. do I grab this chance, right? So I said something about Borneo or a Moutan's or something. And he started talking to me in the doorway. He said, hey, you sound really interesting. Let's have a couple of topics. And so I thought, okay, step one accomplished. I've got his attention.

Wow. And so we sat down talking about Malaysia and music. And then he said to me, why are you here, by the way? And I said, oh, I came for a job interview and he rejected me. He said, look, there's something really special about you. So I'm going to reverse that. So he got me a job, not in Virgin music, but in Virgin television, which was he had started something called Music Box, which was actually, he was ahead of his time. It was a precursor to MTV. Okay.

And he had a satellite TV channel, but you had to have a satellite, you know, as big as your house. house and you've got a pretty big house. that was also, again, he was way ahead of his time. And then we did post-production. So we used to do music videos. And so he, hiding is a financial accountant. You know, when I joined Virgin, and this is no exaggeration, the cash bill had marijuana in it,

the balance she didn't balance, and I was like, whoa. Well, well, well, at least you figured out where the debit was going, right? And I fixed it up, actually. I fixed it up. I picked it up. I cleaned up a suspense account. And Branson grew to like me. And, you know, they moved me into a small little... But you must have been a few levels below Branson, right? You report it directly with him? I was like 100 levels below him. But he just liked me and thought there was something about me. So he kept an eye on me. And then he was. promoted me to a company called 625 which was a post-production company and he made me financial controller I was like 24 and I was financial controller and you know I don't know you my age so or kind of my age so you know that was you know this is the height of music videos right

so 625 was like one of the one of the top companies so I was doing videos I wasn't doing it I was in the company where Godley and Cream were in doing Sledgehammer, you know, all these amazing video, Michael Jackson's video, et cetera. Yeah. So I was doing that. I was financial control. I was kind of everything. I used to kind of put my head in on the creative side.

You know, I'd contribute to Godly and Cream, Sledgehammer video. Wow. And it was an amazing experience. What about the thriller, Michael Jackson? No, that wasn't this. That would have been a blast. A sister company, yeah. Call 525.

Yeah. I wasn't involved in that. Okay. And then, you know, my other, my job part-time used to be, you know, godly and cream and all these big video directors would say, Tony, I need inspiration, which meant go and buy me some marijuana. And so we were in Tottenham Court Road. I'm going to be in trouble, man, with this interview. They betrayed from Tottenham Court Road to Notting Hill knocking the door and some big dude would come out

and do the transaction and go back So yeah it was a very colourful experience at Virgin I had a great time and one day Richard Branson calls me up and says hey I'm going to start an airline Do you want to come and join me in that? I said you're mad You can't start an airline right So I said I'm out of here man because you're going to sell virgin.

All of us are going to be bloody sad by whoever bought it. And I was right. He sold a lot of virgin. Yeah. He sold Virgin music to EMI. Yeah. But where I was wrong is it EMI people. But it's all about timing, man.

It's all about timing. Yeah. It's all about the right idea. Yeah. Correct. So I left and I joined Warner Music. And, you know, the first guy to call me up when I started Air Asia was Richard Branson. Wow.

He said, hey, I thought it was a stupid idea to start an airline. This is an game episode endgame You're the complete manifestation of guts I mean that's what you got to tell the Asian boys and girls It's all about guts man So I So I didn't ask my salary

I didn't ask anything And then in a month's time I was on a plane back to Malaysia. The Malaysian company were like, who is this young asshole coming back, right? They were like organizing a boycott of me. They were like, who is this 27-year-old kid from London? Who's going to be our boss?