The founder of easyJet makes no bones about the fact that he was lucky to have a rich parent who could fund his start-up. The fact that he knew nothing about the business also helped.

I have always wondered what it's like to have a rich father, someone I could go to and ask money from to start up the company of my dreams.

Imagine not having to go begging bowl in hand to dark-suited venture capitalists who look like they eat iron filings for breakfast, and having to do countless rounds of due diligence, of numbers crunching and poring over financial spreadsheets…

Imagine. You could just be sitting at your family breakfast table, having yoghurt and honey (as I imagine a wealthy Greek shipping family would do) and the conversation would go something like this.

Son: "Hey, daddy, I feel like starting up a low cost airline. No one is doing it and I believe the market is ready. People are fed up of paying obscene air fares for small seats and bad service."

Dad: "And you have done market research?"

Son: "No. I just feel in my gut."

Dad: "Gut's a good thing. What do you know about the airline business?"

Son: "Nothing."

Dad: "Even better. How much do you need? And oh, by the way, what are you going to call it?"

Son: "Well, I was at a bar last night with friends and we felt cheap didn't sound as good as easy, so I want to call it easyJet, with the J in capital letters."

Okay, I made up the breakfast conversation bit but it is true that Stelios Haji-Ioannou thought up the name of easyJet at a bar, according to a quick conversation I had with him as we were grabbing a bit of lunch after a forum in Singapore last week.

The Greek tycoon was in Singapore, where he is having an old luxury cruise ship refitted for his first foray into low cost cruising, easyCruise.

Killing several birds with one stone, like the serial entrepreneur his name card says he is, Stelios also made an appearance at a forum organized by research firm, Marketshare, in Singapore last week.

Sporting an orange watch (he walks the easy brand colour), Stelios came across as a simple, no-nonsense and no-airs kind of businessman. In between downing several cans of Coca-cola, he shared his story of how he set up easyJet.

"I come from a shipping family. In 1992, at age 25, I created my first company, Stelmar Tankers. It is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

"This is what I do. I delegate myself out of the job. I get bored easily. I like to step back and move on to the next challenge."

And the next challenge was easyJet in 1995, when he was aged 28. "It's a good thing to have a rich father when you're trying to start up a low cost airline because no bank would have lent me the money. I was happy to have a receptive venture capitalist.

"I was also helped by my complete ignorance of the industry – I was not aware of the risks I was taking."

So, in his ignorance, he became the first airline not to pay commissions to travel agents. He called it "an uncalculated risk".

"I didn't see why we needed the middle layer and the savings we made from not paying commissions were switched to marketing."

In his ignorance, he also removed all freebies. We were the first company to sell coffee on an aeroplane."

And then the Internet came along and gave easyJet the quantum leap it needed. We would not have reached the scale we did without the Internet. In 1998, we switched on our website and by the time we went public in 2000, we were selling 90 percent of our tickets online. We went from a physical to an online business in three years."

Boredom set in again, around 1998 and 1989, and Stelios decided to extend the easy brand. "I realized we had two assets – the airline and the intangible brand reputation. In that year, British Airways did us a tremendous favour, it launched GO – it was the ultimate vindication of the low cost environment. Suddenly, we became the arch rival of BA – the competition created our brand."

Today, easyGroup comprises 12 companies from Internet cafes to car rental and music. In travel, it has set up easyHotel.com and easyCruise.com (see next story).

The company that piqued my curiosity was easy4men – in case you are interested, it's a line of male toiletries that he is developing in partnership with Boots to undercut Gilette by 20-30 percent.

You can tell Stelios is a man who's game to try his hand at any business and is not afraid of risks. He's also not concerned about over-stretching the easy brand.

Indeed, you could say that for the boss of easyGroup, it's easy come, easy go.

The SHY Report
A regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry by one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, Yeoh Siew Hoon.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her company's mission is "Content, Communication, Connection". She is a writer, speaker, facilitator, trainer and events producer. She is also an author, having published "Around Asia In 1 Hr: Tales of Condoms, Chillies & Curries". Her motto is ‘free to do, and be'.

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