Chaleo Yoovidhya was born into a poor Thai-Chinese family in Central Thailand. From a young age he helped his family raise ducks and sell fruit and had very little formal education. As a young micro entrepreneur, he got some experience as an 'antibiotics salesman' and Chaleo went on to set up his own small pharmaceutical company in the early 1960s.

Fortunately for him, in the mid-1970s, he noticed that Thai truck drivers and laborers consumed a Japanese tonic drink called 'Lipovitan' to counter fatigue and in an entreprenerial spirit in 1976, he introduced his own energy-boosting drink called 'Krating Daeng' for the truck drivers and laborers. 'Krating' in Thai refers to a reddish-brown bovine called a "gaur", an animal slightly larger than the bison and 'Daeng' means red.