You’re spot-on, she doesn’t really look Thai. Her family had migrated from India to Burma to Thailand. She got that Thai passport - and she is not only a hundredfold millionaire and the youngest person to make the Forbes list of the twenty richest Thais. Nishita Shah is a glamorous, single woman who is constantly seeking new business ventures.
But not just her money grants her a spot in our Bangkok Sirens compilation. Nishita is of not too unattractive looks and said to be “very relaxed.” What else could you wish for. And yes, she’s got a private pilot’s license for those special trips and likes yoga and surfing. And did I mention that she’s single at the quasi-tender age of 28? And worth some $375 million?
The Boston University grad is largest individual shareholder and director of Precious Shipping, Thailand’s biggest dry-bulk shipper boasting a fleet of 44 ships. Her father Kirit founded the group in 1989 and took it public 1993. The 140-year-old family business is booming. Profits more than doubled in past three years. And Nishita’s favorite color is hot pink.
Leading us to Nishita’s truer colors? The licensed pilot and youngest member on Forbes’ Thailand list also has a clothing company called Burn Baby making “luxury active wear” for “modern urbanite women.”
And Nishita is launching her own fashion label - Nsha - on three continents at the end of this year. The director in over 40 group companies bets her heart on her own luxury fashion label Nsha launched in selected boutiques across the world.
Not that the smoker and devotee of Sai Baba is a hardcore fashionista. Her usual uniform? Hip-hugging jeans and a clingy top. At the same time she continues to read coal, shipping and metal reports every morning and sits in on meetings on the 15 days of the month when her father is overseas.
A father who has collected stakes in all sorts of companies for his GP Group. The clan holds 95% of the Amari Atrium Hotel. Father Kirit last year made daughter Nishita a managing director of GP Group. As she who is ranked No. 19 on the Forbes list doesn’t only want to help managing her family business of Indian origin.
Nishita is the new public face of the GP Group, which today holds the family stakes in some 40 companies in 20-plus countries.
Nishita was born to be a business woman. To follow her father’s steps, the “Indian Thai” had graduated from Boston University with a degree in business and finance. “My dad said I could study anything I wanted,” she once said, “as long as it was business.”
Business is what the Shahs do best. And nobody of the clan is publicity-eager. Try finding good photos of Nishita. Or judging from the rather rudimentary company websites, would you expect some of the richest people of Thailand behind it?
We like this non-chichi attitude of not showing off. As it all comes down to what they always did. Business. All sorts of.
Even fun and creativity turn out to be easy business for Nishita. Study Flying? An own fashion brand? Yoga? Surfing?
Ships, planes, fashion and fun. What else you want? And yep. Forbes magazine lists her as one of the next generation billionaires. Along with Tiger Woods. Any other wish?
An outstandingly rich woman, as Indian as Thai, who kept her true basic humanity. And instincts for that.
She does, she says, think about charity. After the tsunami of 2004 she helped the fishing village Baan Talay Nok “promising to help it recover and to cover the educational costs through university for children who lost one or both parents, roughly 20 in all”, according to Forbes.
And together with her mom Anju she’s a patron and fundraiser for the Queen Sirikit Center for Breast Cancer. Says Forbes she donated the center $160,000 for education, research and construction costs.
Inspired by even richer likes such as Warren Buffet and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? “I hope to be able to leave a considerable portion of my wealth to the GP Foundation,” she once said.
One day. One faraway day. For now, in a bid to add a glamor quotient to her varied business interest, it’s all about Nsha - and at least one Indian meal a day.
Or maybe I’m just a cynic and it’s too easy to be the daughter of her father?
via http://absolutelybangkok.com/bangkok-sirens-nishita-shah-28-thailands-third-richest-woman-single/
