It's the early 1920s in Bangkok's Chinatown. The air is thick and humid, with vendors shouting over the clang of pans. Somewhere in the chaos, a Chinese immigrant named Chia Ek Chor and his brother Chia Jin Hyang are selling vegetable seeds from a stall.

Fast forward over 100 years. And those seeds didn't just grow crops.

That stall grew into CP Group (Charoen Pokphand Group), one of Thailand's largest conglomerates.

One CP subsidiary alone, CP Foods (CPF) has a market cap of about $5.7B in 2024, operating in 17 countries and distributing to over 50 countries.

Beyond food, CP Group stretches into retail (with over 15,000 7-Elevens in Thailand), telecom (True Corporation, one of Thailand's largest mobile operators), property, finance, and even pharmaceuticals.

Yes, the entire conglomerate is an ecosystem so massive, spanning the chicken on your plate, the SIM card in your phone, and to the 7-Eleven on your corner in Thailand.

This is the story of CP Group, a family that bet everything multiple times, and a conviction that if you take care of people first, everything else follows.

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🌱 Two brothers and a stall

Chia Ek Chor and Chia Jin Hyang didn't exactly have a lot of options. Like thousands of other Teochew migrants from China, they landed in Thailand with basically nothing but hope and the little they could carry.

They didn't know the language, and all they could do was observe.

And what they saw in Thailand was that local farmers were struggling with inconsistent seed quality. So they began importing better seeds and selling them across Chinatown.

In 1921, they formalized the shop as "Chia Tai Chung" the official starting point of Chia Tai and, by extension, CP Group.

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🇹🇭 Beyond the right seeds

By the early 1950s, word had spread. And the brothers' seed business, Chia Tai, was booming.

And quality was the most important of all. Chia Tai doubled down on quality with their Aeroplane Brand, where they showed how high quality their seeds are by packing them in sealed paper packets with expiry dates.

In 1959, they bought 40 rai (about 16 acres) in Om Noi to test which seed varieties fit Thailand’s climate.

And it also showed their long-term vision to help farmers succeed as much as they could rather than just sell seeds they imported.

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🤩 A new name

By the 1960s, Chia Tai went beyond seeds and into fertilizers and pesticides.

But they went even further. They went beyond crop farming and into animal feed and livestock. It was a bigger vision, a natural extension of supporting farmers.

They also began operating under a new name: Charoen Pokphand (CP)—roughly "prosperity in food."

They had started their first animal feed mill. It was initially just a simple grinding and mixing setup that later scaled up to full mills. It was expensive machinery and unfamiliar technology.

But CP wasn't just selling feed and walking away. Over time they built systems around farmers, like training, supervision, and technical assistance.

In 1964, Chia Ek Chor's youngest son, Dhanin Chearavanont, took leadership at just 25 years old. Despite being the youngest of four brothers, Dhanin had the most energy and vision for what CP could become.

And by 1975, they introduced a formal contract farming model: CP provided know-how, training, and later inputs like feed and chicks.

Farmers supplied land and labor and CP committed to buying back production (the grown livestock) which meant steady incomes for farmers and a stable supply chain for the company.

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🐣 The Japan export

The 1970s is when their vision gets even bigger. CP decided they didn't just want to feed chickens. They wanted to export them, and specifically, to Japan.

At the time, Thailand wasn't exactly known for industrial poultry. And Japan? Their quality standards were insanely high.

But Dhanin Chearavanont had this conviction: if we control every single link in the chain, from breeder stock to the slaughterhouse, we can meet even Japan's standards.

And they did it. They studied Japanese quality systems, built cold-chain logistics, and established on-call veterinary teams. By 1973, CP was exporting chickens to Japan.

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🛒 A Thai 7-Eleven

If you’ve been to Thailand lately, you know Thailand’s 7-Elevens are way better than overseas. People love it, but it wasn’t always this way.

Jump to the late 1980s. Thailand's cities are modernizing, and CP spots another gap. There was no real convenience retail. So in 1988, they acquired the rights to bring 7-Eleven to Thailand.

The first store opened in 1989, and it struggled initially.

Thais were still shopping at wet markets. Nobody wanted microwaved meals or pre-packaged rice. People literally didn't understand why you'd walk into a store for something cheaper at a street stall.

But CP didn't panic. They localized everything, bringing in tamarind candies instead of just frozen pizza, opened stores small enough to fit on tight street corners, and more.

Slowly, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, 7-Eleven stopped being a foreign concept and started being a neighborhood go-to.

Today? Thailand has over 15,000 7-Eleven stores, second only to Japan.

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📱 The telco bet

CP made another big move, they entered the telco industry in 1990 through TelecomAsia, its fixed-line venture with a TOT concession.

The mobile arm followed in 2001 (TA Orange), and the group rebranded as True Corporation in 2004.

For years, True struggled, bleeding money through regulatory fights and price wars.

But it leaned into convergence, bundling broadband, mobile, and pay-TV/content, and even used 7-Eleven as a nationwide top-up and bill-payment channel.

Slowly, a flywheel started spinning: distribution fed data, data fed loyalty, loyalty fed new businesses.

On March 1, 2023, True merged with dtac. The result? It was now Thailand's largest telecom with 51M mobile subscribers.

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🌀 Surviving at scale

By the 1990s, CP was everywhere: Vietnam, Cambodia, and even China.

But when the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit, the Thai baht collapsed, projects froze, and people got laid off. The whole company went into survival mode.

So they did something hard: they restructured. The family adjusted leadership roles, Dhanin Chearavanont stepped back as Senior Chairman, and his son Suphachai eventually became CEO in 2021, bringing fresh energy around digital transformation and sustainability. They sold off non-core businesses.

And they relearned what they'd known in 1921: you don't build for headlines. You build for longevity.

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🌏 A century later

Today, CP operates in more than 21 countries and generated approximately $100B in revenue in 2023 (that's 3.32T THB, if you're counting).

They're a leading shrimp exporter, run TrueVisions, Thailand’s largest pay-TV operator, assemble motorcycles in China, and train thousands of people every year.

And the Chearavanont sons, heirs of founder Chia Ek Chor, are the #2 on Forbes’ 50 Richest list for Thailand in 2025 with a net worth of $35.7B.

And the family did it all while holding onto a belief they inherited from two brothers who sold seeds: serve others first, and prosperity will follow.

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Takeaway Scoop

Lessons you can take from the CP Group story.

• Start by solving real problems you can see, and grow from there.
  The brothers didn't randomly brainstorm in a room. They observed Thai farmers struggling with poor seed quality and imported better ones.
  They built CP by watching what people actually needed, then delivering it. Don't overthink your first product; find a genuine pain point in your community and fix it.
• Control the entire chain when quality is your differentiator. When CP wanted to export chicken to Japan's ultra-strict market, they didn't just improve one part. They controlled everything from breeding to slaughter.
  If your competitive advantage is quality, own every step that affects it. Half-measures won't cut it when standards are non-negotiable.
• Localize aggressively or watch your expansion fail. CP's 7-Eleven initially flopped because Thais didn't want the same items like frozen pizzas. They wanted familiar snacks.
  So CP stocked tamarind candies and fitted stores into tiny street corners. When expanding to new markets, don't assume what worked elsewhere will work here. Study local habits obsessively and adapt everything.
• Build systems that help your suppliers succeed, not just transactional relationships.
  CP's contract farming didn't just buy from farmers. It trained them, provided inputs, and guaranteed purchases. This created loyalty that lasted generations. If your business depends on suppliers, invest in making them successful. Their growth becomes your moat.

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