NETWORKED

TAN SRI ANTHONY FRANCIS "TONY" FERNANDES

 Networking is possibly one of the most important skills for entrepreneurs and is one which you have the opportunity to practice. Networking involves building and maintaining contacts and relationships with other people. The personal networks which you accumulate over time, both socially and professionally can be an invaluable resource. This applies whether you are an entrepreneur looking to start and grow your own new venture, whether you are looking for a job, or working on a project where external ideas and input can help. For entrepreneurs, a contact made at a purely social event may ultimately help to provide you with one of the key ingredients for the start of the business.

Entrepreneur who can be related to networking would definitely be Tony Fernandas. Tan Sri Anthony Francis "Tony" Fernandes who born on 30 April 1964 is a Malaysian entrepreneur. He is the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd., who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia, to Malaysians with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". Fernandes managed to turn AirAsia, a failing government-linked commercial airline, into a highly successful budget airline public-listed company. He has since founded the Tune Group of companies.

Tan Sri Dr. Tony Fernandes was appointed Group Chief Executive Officer of the Company in December 2001 and was re-designated as a Non-Independent Non-Executive Director on 30 June 2012 and subsequently as Non-Independent Executive Director and Group Chief Executive Officer of the Company in November 2013. He is also a member of the Employee Share Option Scheme of the Board.

He was admitted as an Associate Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants in 1991 and became a Fellow Member in 1996. In 1999, the Sultan of Selangor bestowed on him the title Setia Mahkota Selangor for his contributions to the Malaysian music industry. He also received the Recording Industry Person of the Year 1997 award from the Recording Industry Association of Malaysia.

Since launching AirAsia, he has received numerous state awards as well as accolades from international press and industry observers. Within Malaysia, he has been awarded the title Dato’ by the Sultans of Negeri Sembilan and Pahang; Dato’ Seri by the Sultan of Perak; and the title Tan Sri, one of the country’s highest honours, from a former Yang di-Pertuan Agong. He also received an Honorary Doctorate of Business Innovation from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in March 2010.

The AirAsia Group services the most extensive network across Asia & Australia. Other than that, together with partners, Tony founded Tune Air Sdn Bhd in 2001, with a vision to democratize air travel and free it from the clutches of the elite by offering low fares and high quality services. They bought the then loss making AirAsia from its Malaysian owner DRB-Hicom, for a token RM1 (USD 0.25 cents), and agreed to take on the airline’s RM40million debt. Driven by Fernandes and with the help of his partners, AirAsia repaid that debt in less than two years; despite the fact that it was operating in an extremely challenging environment in the post-September 11, 2001, era.  It started with two planes (Boeing 737-300’s), one destination (Pulau Langkawi) and a staff of 250. This shows that Tony has a good networking skill with the partners and also employee in which he is always concern about the staff and passengers.

Tony’s networking skills able him to explore his business to overseas and he received many awards such as Honor of the Commander of the Order of the British Empire, conferred by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2011 for services to promote commercial and educational links between the UK and Malaysia. In 2010, the French government conferred upon him the Officier of the Legion d’Honneur award and in 2013, the Commander of the Legion d’Honneur for outstanding contributions towards the economy of France through the aviation industry.

He won the ‘Airline Industry Leader of the Year’ award at the 4^th annual Aviation 100 Awards in January 2014, for pushing the boundaries of the aviation industry. In 2015, TIME Magazine named Tony Fernandes to the 2015 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The list, now in its twelfth year, recognizes the activism, innovation, and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals.