Khun Jin Is Already Building Southeast Asia's Biggest Mall

Bangkok is getting a new mall built around a 20,000-seat concert arena, and the person planning it is barely out of a UK and US education himself. Khun Jin, the Mall Group's Assistant General Manager for Leasing and Property Management, told host Mr. Jason and co-host Esther that the company's next project, Bangkok Mall, going up across from BITEC in Bangna, is on track to be the largest mall in Southeast Asia, at roughly a million square meters of retail space. The project is a real, publicly reported one on the scale Khun Jin describes: industry coverage puts the mixed-use development's value at roughly 50 billion baht, with the mall itself slated to open first in early 2026 and its arena, operated by AEG, following by 2028. AEG's own track record backs up the comparison Khun Jin draws to Coachella: the company is one of the largest sports and live entertainment operators in the world, running venues and festivals across multiple continents.

Khun Jin is third-generation in a company that built Emporium, M Quartier, and the recently opened M Sphere, together rebranded as the M District. His conversation with Students Incorporated covered how that family business decides which brands get space, how it grooms unknown names into anchors, and what a mall built by a 20-something actually looks like.

Straight From Graduation to a Hard Hat

Khun Jin was sent to boarding school at 12 and studied retail environments in both the UK and the US before coming home to Bangkok. He described the return as having "not much of a choice": M Sphere was under construction the moment he graduated. His mother gave him ten days at her beach house before that. Then he came in "straight to work."

His first day on the job was a meeting with IKEA and Prada, two of the anchor tenants signing on for the new development. The building itself was still just a poured foundation. "I just saw going in with my bare hands and everything with a helmet on site with the leasing team," he said. It wasn't his first exposure to the business. He'd been sitting in on floor plans since he was six or seven years old, which he credits for an early interest in interior design and an instinct for how shoppers actually move through a space.

Turning a Mascot Into a Storefront

The standard retail lease in Thailand runs about three years, but Khun Jin said M Sphere is leaning increasingly on much shorter pop-ups, six months to a year, specifically to let online-only brands test a physical footprint without committing to a full storefront. The example he pointed to is Butterbear: it started as a mascot, Nong Nui, that the Mall Group asked tenants to create for a Children's Day event. It "exploded" in popularity from there, he said, and now has its own permanent pop-up store. He mentioned two friends behind similarly small-scale brands, referred to as MP1 and MDEL, that grew the same way, proof, in his telling, that a mall's job now includes functioning as an incubator, not just collecting rent from brands that already made it.

The mascot's rise is a matter of public record, and it backs up Khun Jin's pitch about what a mall can incubate. Footage of the character dancing at the M District went viral on the Chinese platform Douyin, pulling in more than 16 million views and 5 million likes, and drew fans queuing before dawn for weekend meet-and-greets. The bakery brand behind it reported sales climbing roughly tenfold in the aftermath, landed collaborations with Gucci and Thai designer label Pipatchara, and was tapped by Thailand's tourism authority as a promotional presenter. That's a steeper trajectory than most retail incubation programs produce, and it's exactly the kind of outcome Khun Jin is betting the mall's shorter, lower-commitment leases can keep manufacturing.

Reading the Trends Before They Land

Asked what categories he's watching, Khun Jin named lifestyle, wellness, and longevity (the run-club and active-wear surge that followed COVID) as well as pets, which he called an increasingly important category as Thailand's population growth slows. On disruption, he drew a sharp line between departments and main retail: cosmetics sold through department-style counters are getting hit hardest by e-commerce, because shoppers already know which product they want. Full-experience luxury retail, he argued, is more insulated, since customers still want to touch and try before they buy. He also noted that global chains like Zara, Uniqlo, and H&M are constrained by standards set elsewhere, while a mall like his can shape a space around a specific customer in a way a franchise can't.

Khun Jin's read on where e-commerce bites hardest lines up with what's actually happening in Thailand's retail numbers. Online shopping now accounts for roughly 30 percent of the country's total retail value, a market that recently crossed 1 trillion baht, with Shopee holding about half of that e-commerce share and TikTok Shop overtaking Lazada for second place. That's precisely the kind of shopping, standardized products bought on price and familiarity, that a cosmetics counter competes against directly. It's also why property analysts including Cushman & Wakefield have flagged "experiential retail," malls built around dining, entertainment, and things a screen can't replicate, as the industry's dominant survival strategy. Bangkok Mall isn't the only bet being placed on that idea: The Mall Group's rival Central Pattana is building a competing 21-billion-baht flagship, The Central Phaholyothin, aiming to open around the same window in late 2026.

Leading a Team Older Than He Is

Bringing new ideas into a business "with such an established dominant history," as Esther put it, is Khun Jin's daily reality. He's often the youngest voice in a room where the older generation has decades more experience. His approach, he said, isn't to dictate. He wants a team that pitches ideas back at him. He compared it to a lifetime of playing football: one underperforming player doesn't sink the team, and one person calling every play doesn't win it either. "We're going to win together and we're going to lose together," he said.

That generational handoff is a real and closely watched question across Thai retail, not just at Khun Jin's company. The Mall Group was founded in 1981 by his grandfather, Supachai Umpujh, and passed to his mother, Supaluck Umpujh, who took over as chairwoman in 2005 and has run it since. Business analysts in Thailand talk openly about a "third-generation curse," the pattern of family conglomerates losing momentum once founders' grandchildren take the reins, and point to the same fixes Khun Jin's own instincts echo: clear governance, merit-based decision-making, and a leadership style that listens rather than dictates. Rival conglomerate Central Group, now navigating its fifth generation, has formalized that approach with a written family constitution and council. Khun Jin's version, at least as he described it on the show, is less formal but points the same direction: win or lose as a team, not as a single voice at the top.

What's Actually Going Into Bangkok Mall

Beyond the AEG-partnered arena (AEG also promotes Coachella, and Khun Jin described the smaller UOB Live venue at M Sphere as a "warm-up" for what's coming at the new site), the plans include an aquarium (vendor still being decided) and a floor layout still being finalized. The first three levels will hold conventional retail, still being conceptualized. The fourth floor, he said, will be devoted entirely to food, built around an indoor-market concept he called a "big challenge" to execute well. Concert-wise, the venue is sized for acts in the range of Justin Bieber; Lisa, he said, would need the whole stadium treatment elsewhere. Asked how he felt about the scale of it, Khun Jin didn't hedge:

We have no choice but to succeed in this one. It's the establishment of Bangkok.

Asked what advice he'd give students eyeing a career in retail or real estate, Khun Jin's answer wasn't about spreadsheets. It was about leaving the country and paying attention to categories you don't personally care about, because understanding what a tenant needs and what a customer wants, he said, matters more than any single lecture hall.

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