From Academic Excellence to Real-World Impact: Visant Srimanothip’s Sasin Journey

Visant Srimanothip (Sasin MBA 2024) was honored with the Professor Toemsakdi Krishnamra Award for Academic Excellence, presented to students who demonstrated exceptional academic performance, perseverance, and dedication throughout their journey at Sasin. Three months after graduation, he already founded a food and beverage brand, Protein Haus, with two branches in Central World and Bangkok’s Old Town, while also taking a central role in his family business, leading real estate investment, development, and acquisitions.  

Professors Who Shaped His Thinking

Sasin’s teaching environment, which focuses on getting students to solve real-world problems, helped Visant grow both academically and professionally. He credits several professors for shaping his MBA experience: Ajarn Piman Limpaphayom and Ajarn Pattarake Sarajoti gave him financial tools and templates, but the real value was learning how to take them apart and rebuild them for different problems. Ajarn Alvin Ng taught the class to think systematically about technology and AI, emphasizing that humans need to level up alongside better tools — knowing where judgment still matters and how to test and validate outputs before scaling them. Ajarn Tom Connelly, Ajarn Atipol Bhanich Supapol, Ajarn Ragil Ratnam, and Ajarn Philip Zerillo focused heavily on process — a lesson that stuck with him, since in the real world, the process used to reach an answer is often more valuable than the answer itself.

The Action Lab faculty — including Ajarn Chaipong Pongpanich, Ajarn Narun Leelamanit, Ajarn Nophea Sasaki, and Ajarn Pin-Pin Tea-makorn were also especially demanding. They often asked whether he was truly satisfied with his own deliverables, and he learned that sometimes the toughest critic has to be yourself.

“What I appreciated most about Sasin was that the professors consistently challenged the way I thought, not just the answer I arrived at,” Visant said.

Of all the courses, the one that challenged Visant most was the Risk Management for Financial Business, led by Sasin Assistant Professor Dr. Wantanee Poonvoralak. In the class, students had just 30 minutes to interpret a problem, trust their team, structure the issue, build a presentation, present it, and defend it. Visant described the course as a capstone that tested nearly everything he had learned at Sasin — finance, strategy, risk communication, teamwork, and judgment.

“One of the most important lessons for me was that defending your thinking does not mean defending it at all costs,” said Visant. “Sometimes the best response is to recognize that an assumption is wrong, change your view, and learn from it.”

 

Learning Through Real-World Labs and Competitions

Visant also took part in the Sasin-MIT Consulting Lab, ESG Lab, and New Ventures Lab, and represented Sasin at the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) in Singapore. Through the Sasin-MIT Consulting Lab, he worked with an energy company, an industry outside his field of expertise, which broadened his business perspective.

“At Sasin, when in every class you’re working with different tools and in different industries, you get much more comfortable with ambiguity. You have to make decisions based on the information you have, back your reasoning with your values, and adapt when you’re wrong,” Visant said.

The ESG component of Sasin’s MBA program also taught him to balance profit with environmental and social responsibility, a mindset he now applies to improve efficiency and brand value in his family’s real estate projects. Real-world consulting work with different Action Learning Labs also showed him how large companies practically integrate ESG with finance, making the learning far more applicable than theory alone.

“I think what I really liked about Sasin’s classes is that it’s real-world. You work with a real-world company on a real-world problem that’s ongoing. You help them solve a problem,” Visant said. “There’s a lot of intangible value we get to learn when we work with real-world companies.”

 

Preparing for the Family Business

Beyond the Action Learning Lab, Visant credits Sasin’s Family Business: Managing Growth and Succession elective, led by Sasin Visiting Professor Chanitr Charnchainarong, for giving him a platform to discuss issues in family business, where he found value in discussions with his classmates in diverse industries who had similar problems and was able to tackle family business problems by working with real case studies with an experienced professor. Earlier in his career, Visant co-launched StarUp by StarWork, a government-partnered venture capital initiative that operated similarly to Shark Tank, supporting startups through funding and mentorship. He shared some tips for people who want to get out of the comfort zone and become entrepreneurs:  

Tips for Business Success

From Visant Srimanothip (Sasin MBA 2024)

1. Choose something you’re genuinely passionate about — it’ll demand more time than you expect
2. Don’t panic when problems arise; there’s always more than one way to solve them
3. Stay true to your core values, but stay flexible to adapt and change as the business grows
4. Lean on your Sasin network — diverse perspectives make problems easier to solve
5. Keep learning and growing, so you don’t fall behind as things change
6. Trust your gut — they are often shaped by experience, even when you cannot immediately articulate the reasoning behind them

Visant was recognized with the Professor Toemsakdi Krishnamra Award for Academic Excellence alongside several friends who also received honors at Sasin’s 44th anniversary celebration: Kanoksiri “Pan Pan” Jriyasetapong (MBA 2024), Shinichi Takadaya (EMBA 2024), and Adisorn Popp (Connect+ EMBA 2024), each of whom received the Sasin Excellence Award. Another of Visant’s classmates, Pauline Daithanawong (MBA 2022), also received the Chulalongkorn University Outstanding Graduate Student Award. He credits his success to the professors and classmates who challenged him, and his family who supported him throughout his Sasin journey.

“Pan Pan showed me what it looks like to stay focused on a goal for two years and actually launch it, while leading with empathy. Shinichi taught me to step back, see the bigger picture, then break things down and stress-test the assumptions. Pauline has been both a mentor and a friend, and someone I could use as a sounding board throughout the past two years,” said Visant.