Eat your heart out, Hooters: Vietnamese Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao is set to be South East Asia’s first self-made female billionaire when her her VietJet Aviation, Vietnam’s only privately-owned airlines, IPOs. The airlines has captured a 30% stake in the market after being around only a few years. The secret? Bikini-clad flight attendants. Because of the rudimentary and time-tested gimmick of [ahem] sells, VietJet is likely to surpass national carrier Vietnam Airlines as the nation’s biggest domestic carrier this year, according to CAPA Centre for Aviation. The IPO, which Thao hopes will take place in three months’ time, will make it more valuable than South Korea’s Asiana Airlines Inc. or Finnair Oyj. VietJet’s revenue tripled to VND 10.9 tn (USD 488 mn, and yes the irony of the currency’s name has not escaped us) in 2015, while net income rose to almost 1 tn (USD 45 mn), Bloomberg reports. It almost seems wondrous why no one thought of it sooner. But considering Vietnam’s conservative culture, it may have needed a woman to cross into taboo territory. Thao is a formidable businesswoman. The 45-year old holds a 90 percent stake in Ho Chi Minh City’s Dragon City development and majority stakes in three resorts in Vietnam. She is the vice-chairman of the private Ho Chi Minh City Development JS Commercial Bank. And by her very stature in regional business she is unfazed by any controversy surrounding her airlines. "We don’t mind people associating the airline with the bikini image. If that makes people happy, then we are happy" she tells Bloomberg.