Conor Bracken lives in Bangkok and owns Andovar, a translation and localisation company.
Thailand was never really on the cards when a young 18-year-old Bracken set sail for England but through a change in squatters rights, a lost coin toss, lost luggage and falling out of local transport in the Philippines, it is precisely there he has ended up carving out a comfortable but busy lifestyle.
Bracken’s first step on the emigrant trail was London where Bracken took up residency in a squat while studying computer science at University College London.
“I had about £45 a week to live on, including rent, which is not a lot in London even in the 1980s, so I was squatting until changes in the application laws made it hard for me to stay, so I dropped out of university two years into the course.”
Bracken moved on to Spain and began teaching English, saving up enough money to pay for a TEFL course, the official qualification to teach English as a foreign language. With no courses available, he was setting his sights on Taiwan as a destination to teach when a last-minute place on a course came up.
“At the last moment, one place opened up and they invited me in to take a test. I aced the grammar test and did a sample lesson. There were 10 people who wanted this last place on the course. Myself and another girl had passed 100 per cent so they said ‘if you don’t mind, we’ll toss a coin to see who gets the last place’. So, I can say I came to Asia on a coin toss because I lost the coin toss.”
Lost luggage
Bracken booked his flight to Hong Kong with a plan to take the boat to Taiwan from there. But, upon arrival in Hong Kong, he discovered his luggage had arrived in Karachi. By the time he was reunited with it again, his funds were once again low and the job he’d organised was gone.
He spent his time in Hong Kong as an English teacher and then later owned a hot dog stand, his first taste of entrepreneurship. Having outstayed his visa, his next move was to Japan via the Philippines.
“After having a good time in the Philippines, I had an accident in Manila, falling out of a jeepney which is the local transportation. After hospital bills and again overstaying my visa, I had no funds left to go to Japan. It’s quite expensive.”
Thailand finally beckoned. And since moving there, Bracken has never looked back. Living in the outskirts of Bangkok he learned the Thai language – an advantage in his teaching career as, with no formal education, the better paid jobs were hard to come by without it.
Bracken was keen to start his own company and soon found a way to do so.
“I got the idea to start a Thai translation service doing work over the internet. I didn’t have any money to start a business so I walked into the largest English language school in Thailand, ECC Thailand, and proposed that they start a translation division. I would run it, find the translators, use websites and use their physical offices.
“I would do the editing of translations that I could translate into English, I’d make them native English quality. Meanwhile, I needed somebody to do the reverse for translations that came in the other way. My proposal was that I would have 25 per cent of shares of this company and just an English teacher’s salary to start off with.”
Singapore vehicle
Bracken was 10 years working different roles in this company which was later sold on, finally ending up as a standalone under the name Eqho Communications.
By this time Bracken was eager to have full ownership of a business so he founded Andover though a Singapore vehicle, an option he finds more simplistic for business.
“It’s much more suitable for international expansion. I often talk about this point today to start-ups in Thailand. You can look at the tax rates and say it’s about a tax dodge but that isn’t the real story. Thailand, like many emerging markets, is very inefficient when it comes to accounting. There are onerous requirements on auditing, everything has to be in the Thai language, everything has to be changed into Thai baht and there’s withholding tax on payments to outsourcers and freelancers. So it’s the burden of doing complex accounting in the local language; a lot of compliance issues means Thailand isn’t suitable.”
With offices in Colombia, the US, India and, of course Thailand, Andovar has a diverse client base from Hollywood movies to Toastmasters International. Even the selection of languages available in the Irish Department of Transport exams were recorded in Bracken’s Bangkok studios.
Though he has no plans to move back to Ireland, Bracken does see himself opening an office in Dublin in the near future to give him a European base. Although he left as a teenager, he still maintains his Irish roots, being one of the founders of the Irish Chamber of Commerce in Thailand.
But he still wouldn’t recommend it as a country to start a business unless you arrive with funds. Banks don’t lend to foreigners, he says.
So there must be another reason he chooses to continue to live there,
“In Thailand, there are restaurants and bars open 24 hours. It’s an easygoing lifestyle. It may be extremely hot outside but it’s always 23 degrees air-conditioned inside.”
