The phenomenon of global and social change including each crisis have affected business either directly or indirectly, more or less. Not even "Mama", a food product that has been associated with Thailand for a long time. The story of Mama and Saha Group of companies through the words of Vathit Chokwatana, Executive Director of Saha Pathanapibul PCL at the Mission X: The Boot Camp of Advance Corporate Transformation seminar. There is a very interesting aspect of learning and adapting.

Before being the 3rd generation executive of the Saha Group, the 80-year-old company, Vathit, previously worked in the film and cassette industry. Therefore, he has a direct experience that clearly sees the disruption of technology in the current of change. Even though that business has a perseverance in product development? At the point where the business will die, it cannot be held back. However, with his graduated background in Digital Electronics Engineer from Silicon Valley, he is familiar with the way of startup that Fail Fast does not give up and dares to try. At the same time, he has a vision in eye-opening, always open to new technologies.

When coming to work at Sahapat, he takes care of Mama, which is a product that has already achieved at a level of success. But there is still room for further development. Therefore, it started at Mama Partner Project. This is a creative innovation that combines understanding of human behavior, systems of logistics and supply chains together to generate more growth.

In addition, the production innovation that is done in parallel with Process is another highlight. From the beginning, Mama had a rule that “Food must be delicious. If it's not tasty, don't sell. When taking it to the test, you must win more than 80% of your competitors to launch.” Although this rule looks good, helps reduce the risk, but on the other side it may cause you to miss the opportunity to experiment, create and learn good things as well

In one year, Sahapat released the O.K. Oriental Kitchen (OK) series with a hot Korean flavor and shrimp stir-fried with tom yum sauce. Those are premium products that can be sold at 15 baht per pack. The sales target was reached successfully. When Vathit traveled to Singapore and had the opportunity to eat salted egg snacks, which tasted delicious. So, he brought it back for his son to taste. His son also liked it, then he asked the R&D team to make a salted-egg flavored instant noodle for him to taste. It was not good in the first try but they had developed until it became very tasty. The more importance was that that time was considered to break the principle that the Market Test must be given first, if winning 80%, then selling because Vathit thought that competitors have R & D as well. It may be too late if following the old rules. Deliciousness should have a sensitivity variable to bring to the market as well.

At that time was September, Vathit told the team that he would like to bring such salted egg flavored noodles to sell in December which is faster than ever. Since normally, when Mama would like to launch a new flavor product, it will take at least 6 months. It's a real dare to break the rules. The media was booked. The BTS ads was a whole salted egg mama. Lawson shop was used as one of the selling points. It appeared to be selling very well until many big distributors have asked to sell such a new product. It's a success that comes from trying, daring to break the rules, as well as being quick to do the right thing at the right time, which is very important

The COVID situation is a new challenge that experiences of solving many problems which have been used in the past may not be effective. What is very important is Big Data, the phenomenon of people buying instant noodles to hoard a lot in 2011, when there was a huge flood. After that, no one hoarded again. Mama Cup can't be sold because people are at home or when people get their state welfare card, they tend to spend all that money in the first week. Understanding consumer behavior is therefore very important. Information comes from many sources. It's not just the survey companies, but the eyes and eye openings are very important. For example, Vathit likes to listen to various insight news from YouTube and believes that customers are also on online media. Opening your eyes on NFT, Metaverse or trends in order to make Mama not outdated, the launch of NFT Mama at the Saha Group Fair took place, which attracted a lot of attention.

Winning the hearts of customers from generation to generation is very meaningful. Mama still values older customers and pays attention with the new generation who are willing to pay more money for favorite products. The emergence of the OK series is to capture the new generation market. But it's still not yet a sub-brand for the overall picture of Mama's products according to the 80-20 principle that has the main flavor, namely minced pork, Tom Yum Kung, and creamy Tom Yum Kung which are best seller forever. However, experiments, research, and proofs still have to be continued in order to find new good things that will happen in the future.

Even though it is an organization that is quite old, but Vathit still communicates, encourages and enhances people in the organization to never stop learning, developing, always keep thinking and trying something new. For example, the R & D department never stops developing new recipes or flavors. Executives don't stop tasting and bringing ideas into practice because he believes If there is no development, there will be neither success nor failure, but if you learn and keep doing it, there will always be a chance of success.