Report from The STAR (Malaysia) dated 12 July 2011 :-
Group-buying on the pick up
CHECK THIS OUT: Wang (left) and Kang showing how the group buying site, Everyday.com.my works.
PETALING JAYA: Malaysians have typically been adverse to shopping online but the trend is expected to change now that the online-coupon business is picking up.
These coupons offer attractive discounts on various products and services to Malaysians willing to sign up for them in groups over the Internet.
Many are willing to purchase online coupons for discounts on the products that they are interested in, said Edwin Wang, chief executive of Integrated Methods Sdn Bhd, which owns the group-buying site Everyday.com.my.
He said Everyday.com.my has about 400,000 subscribers. With that kind of encouragement, Integrated Methods is trying to double its share of the Malaysian market by year end, from 20% now.
It also wants to boost its annual revenue to RM10mil in the same period.
"Our goal is to expand our operations to every major city in every state, including East Malaysia," Wang said.
The website currently offers coupon deals for three states - Selangor, Penang and Johor.
Integrated Methods was recently acquired by Ticket Monster, the largest group-buying company that is based in South Korea.
Frank Kang, Ticket Monster's international growth director, said Malaysia is its first overseas expansion exercise.
He said the country would be the company's regional hub in South-East Asia and would act as a springboard into nearby countries, including Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
"Relevant localised and customised deals is the key to success and we are working closely with Integrated Methods to bring the best deals to Malaysian customers," Kang said.
"Our approach is that we target the smaller retail businesses and not just the high-end product and service providers."
Ticket Monster hopes to become the most powerful marketing engine for small businesses in Malaysia. "We want to help these businesses get more exposure and provide interesting experiences for our customers," said Kang.
But that does not mean it is adverse to partnerships with big businesses, such as fast-food chains and hypermarkets.
"We have a corporate business development team to source these kinds of partnerships," he added
Report from Relaxnews 2011 dated 1 July 2011 :-
PayPal: Your wallet will be obsolete by 2015
GOING OUT OF DATE: Paypal is predicting that mobile payments will supersede physical wallets in the not too distant future. - AFP/Relaxnews
Internet money transfer company PayPal has just hit its 100 million active accounts milestone, and with it, the company is predicting that mobile payments will supersede physical wallets in the not too distant future.
"Consumers are increasingly giving up traditional payment methods such as cash and cheques and turning to a more modern - and anytime, anywhere - form of payment," said PayPal president Scott Thompson on the company's blog.
"We believe that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the United States - from your local corner store to Walmart. We will no longer need to carry a wallet," he added.
The company is so sure about its no-cash prediction, it is asking five of its San Francisco Bay area employees to "use only digital currencies to pay for all their purchases" in a pseudo-competition (read viral marketing stunt) that will be announced on July 11.
A Canadian study conducted by Leger Marketing on behalf of PayPal and released on June 28 found that more than half of Canadians are comfortable with a cashless society.
During an opening keynote at the GSMA Mobile Money Summit in Singapore, Visa's head of mobile innovation, Bill Gajda, announced Visa's vision to convert mobile devices into "true digital wallets" adding that "we're at the dawn of the next generation of mobile money - maybe 'mobile money 2.0.' As an industry we've moved past what software we're going to buy and can now talk about what we're going to do."
Report from AsiaOne dated Sun, Mar 06, 2011
He made S$80 million from S$300k startup
How does it feel like to pocket S$80 million for one deal?
Ask Thai Express founder Ivan Lee.
The 35-year-old recently sold 70 per cent of his business to Thai-listed food and beverage conglomerate Minor International.
The deal, which was concluded in May 2008, originally netted him S$40 million, with the opportunity to have further payments over the next three years if they met certain targets, reported The Straits Times. They did, and this added a cool S$40 million to their takings.
Not bad for the millionaire who started honing his entrepreneurial skills at 11, by renting out his Nintendo game console to other kids in his Ang Mo Kio HDB area for S$1 an hour.
By the time he was 26, he had moved on to bigger things. With S$300,000, together with then-fiancee and now wife Grace Goh, he started the now-ubiquitous Thai Express brand with a single restaurant in Holland Village, despite doubts from even his closest family members, to friends and even his landlord.
In eight years, he had grown his company to include several other F&B brands: Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe, New York New York, and Shokudo Food Bazaar. The deal with Minor valued his company at a hefty S$114 million.
Mr Lee, whose father owned a stevedore business and whose mother is a beautician, stepped down as chief executive of the company, but remains a director on the board, and is still a shareholder.
An entrepreneur at heart, he now has his eyes set on the China market, but in a totally different field.
He now has a Chinese Internet start-up and will launch a new social networking site that will rival established names like Baidu and QQ in the next three to four months.
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Report from The Straits Times dated Wed, Feb 04, 2009
Ivan Lee - Young man in a hurry
By John Lui
The business bug bit Mr Ivan Lee, 33, CEO of the Thai Express group of restaurants, early in life. At 11, to be exact.
That was when the boy, then the owner of the only Nintendo game console in his Ang Mo Kio HDB area, began renting out the unit to other children. He charged $1 an hour.
'People kept coming, so I bought an organiser. After a while, my book was full. Business was good.'
He made about $10 a day, but his profits were literally being eaten away. 'The kids started to ransack my fridge. I was making a loss.'
So the lad sold instant noodles at $1 a bowl. A slice of luncheon meat was 50 cents. It is fitting that the same dish is now raking in the dollars at his Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafes. Now it costs $8.90 (though, to be fair, it includes service charge and a fried egg).
His latest Xin Wang opened in the Northpoint Mall last November. It is a fact that he likes to mention to friends and family who had told him that Singaporeans would never pay cafe prices for instant noodles.
'I love rubbing it in,' he says, with a grin.
The Thai Express group's seven restaurant brands now have 76 outlets around the Asia-Pacific region - including Mongolia, Australia and China - and a sales turnover of $100 million last year. His achievements earned him the fourth spot last year in the annual lifestyle power list compiled by Life!
Dressed in a simple white office shirt and dark slacks, he spoke to Life! at the Thai Express headquarters in the spartan Delta House industrial building in Alexandra Road.
His personal space, like the rest of the premises, is spare with beige walls, simple furniture and computers. It is in line with his keep-it-simple approach. The business, which employs about 1,800 staff in the region, needs loading and warehouse space that is close to the central area, which the building provides.
With outlets opening at the rate of roughly one a month, mostly in Singapore, he and his team are running at a sprint. In the six years since the company's first Thai Express outlet in Holland Village, he has built the largest Thai casual-dining chain the world. With nine branches, Xin Wang is the largest Hong Kong cafe chain in Singapore. Another brand, Shokudo, in Raffles City and in The Heeren, offers two of the island's largest Japanese cuisine dining areas.
The New York New York cafe and deli outlets grew at the rate of nine outlets in just over two years.
And there is the strange patriotic pleasure of seeing a Singapore-based company running a Thai eatery in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. A New York New York is also planned to open there.
But it is the Xin Wang chain which holds a special place in Mr Lee's heart.
He had a hunch that Singaporeans would pay double or triple hawker centre rates for no-frills fare such as French toast, shaved ice desserts and, yes, instant noodles. The National University of Singapore philosophy honours graduate had seen similar eateries packed to the rafters in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.
But no one believed it would work. Do not tinker with Thai Express' core identity, he was told. Among the critics was his father-in-law.
Self-made millionaire Tommie Goh, 60, is former executive chairman of electronics firm JIT Holdings and Businessman of the Year 1999, and now chairman of investment company 2G Capital.
He recalls: 'I said, 'Why do people want to eat instant noodles and luncheon meat at a cafe? They can jolly well buy them from the NTUC supermart.''
But Mr Lee bet on his hunch and opened the first Xin Wang in Hougang's Heartland Mall in late 2005.
The outlet was swamped from day one. Its success proved that Mr Lee could trust his instincts, even if no one else did. Taking a risk and proving the naysayers wrong is deeply satisfying to him.
'It means a lot more to me than the money,' he says.
Mr Goh today says he is very happy to have been proven wrong by his son-in- law, whom he describes as 'a strong character'.
'He has a strong belief in himself. He wants to be an entrepreneur. He wants to work for himself,' he says.
Mr Goh first laid eyes on the brash young man when he showed up one day with his daughter, Grace. The couple met while taking the honours philosophy course at NUS.
His daughter was zipping around campus in a Porsche Boxster convertible while Mr Lee was riding a Honda 400 cc racer motorcycle.
Mr Goh's first impression of him was that he was 'a young man in a hurry'. Fearing for his daughter's safety, he offered to subsidise the purchase of a car if Mr Lee would give up the bike. To his dismay, Mr Lee declined the offer.
Today, Ms Grace Goh, 31, laughs at the memory. She says that she would never have dared to ride a bike, not even one handled by her then boyfriend.
Mr Lee used his own family's car instead when they went out for dates. He later bought a car with his own money.
The couple now have two girls, aged 14 months and three years. They live in a rented apartment near Great World City in River Valley Road while their bungalow in the Tanglin area is being built.
When the couple first met as first- year students, the sparks that flew were far from romantic.
'I thought he was this loud, arrogant fella in colourful, tight T-shirts and he thought I was this snobbish rich girl,' she says, laughing. He had an 'annoying' habit of getting on the dean's list without studying. He seemed to prefer hanging out with a group of male friends and was not shy about teasing girls, she says.
It was only three years later when they were in the same small honours class that they had their first proper conversation. That led to their first date.
Ms Goh knew how hard it must have been for a boy from Ang Mo Kio estate to date a girl with her own sports car, especially for someone as driven to succeed as her husband.
He says he feels 'uncomfortable' with taking anything that he feels is not rightfully earned as it becomes a debt he feels obliged to repay.
He paid for their dates which were simple affairs. For example, he says with a laugh that for their first date, they ate at the Wee Nam Kee chicken rice eatery near Novena MRT station.
Mr Lee's own parents were also entrepreneurs, though not on the same scale as his father-in-law. His mother, Madam Lenice Cheng, 60, is a retired beautician who ran her own parlours and his father, Mr Lee Hock Seng, 57, runs a stevedore firm. When he was in Primary 6, his parents divorced.
Madam Cheng hired a maid to help her look after Mr Lee and his younger brother and sister.
He says he was a tearaway during those years, hanging out in void decks and getting into scrapes with a group of teenagers. From them, he learnt 'smoking, shoplifting and fighting'.
His father asked for custody. He knew by then it was too late to play the strict parent, so he just offered a lot of support and broad guidelines.
'It was his way of showing his love,' Mr Lee says. ?The motorcycle, for example, was his father's idea, to give the boy space to explore and learn real-world lessons. His father did, however, keep a closer watch over his sister.
Mr Lee did well enough to go from Anderson Secondary School to Anderson Junior College and then to NUS, where he took up economics and philosophy. On the side, he set up a mortgage broking and insurance sales business with a friend, which gave him some pocket money.
His wife, Grace, says his ability to juggle many things has to do with his analytical mind.
She knows better than to argue with him, she says with a laugh. His fierce urge to win and his intellect, when fired up, make for one-sided contests.
'We don't argue because it's tiring. His logic and reasoning are powerful, he can just think something through and get to the point of it,' she says.
And his mind is never more thoroughly engaged than when he is thinking of his next move for his business.?He and his team of managers pore over every detail, to either cut costs or improve quality.
His team obsesses about efficiency and waste. For example, kitchens do not generate revenue. Seating does. So with each new restaurant, his team finds new ways to squeeze seating space from the kitchen, by refining how chefs work.
His chefs experiment with ways to simplify food preparation. About 20 spices are required in traditional home-made tom yum soup. After testing, omitting 15 spices still made for a tasty dish, he says.
Taking care of his people is a key priority in an industry that relies on human interaction yet is known for its high employee turnover. He fights to keep good employees on board, he says.
These are lessons he has learnt the hard way.
He and Grace came out of university with plans to marry but also to test a somewhat offbeat cafe-cum-nail bar concept with his mother.
The three pooled their money and the Onyx Cafe in Siglap opened in 2000. The eatery limped along but created the cash flow to help fund their second venture in 2002, the first Thai Express in Holland Village. This was an instant hit and Onyx was turned into the second Thai Express outlet, which is still open today.
'We were just surviving. With a few small changes, we could turn Onyx into a Thai Express,' he says.
In typical fashion, he wanted to do it as much on his own as possible.
'If I was to do it, it would be on my own terms, so I could take the credit for the success and blame for the failure.'
The idea for Thai Express came to him when he saw that while there were Japanese casual dining chains such as Sakae Sushi and Western chains such as Swenson's, there was no such outlets for Thai food despite its popularity here.
The profits from the first few restaurants were put back into expansion. So he and his wife had to watch their spending in the early years.
The independent man also refused the offer of a penthouse from his father-in- law because he wanted to be able to buy a home for his family. He chose a rented condominium in the Newton area. By 2005, he had enough to buy a semidetached house in Grange Road.
By then, his wife had had enough of running a business and went back to NUS to study law. She graduated in 2006 and is a housewife. His mother went back to running her own beauty salon.
But Mr Lee had by then learnt the tricks of the restaurant trade. That, married to his strong drive for running his own business, sealed it for him.
'I had this strong, overwhelming sense that I could turn things around,' he says, following the dismal performance of Onyx.
At the current rate of expansion, he has more than turned things around, but he says he is far from done. Just as 30 years ago, there was an explosion in customer numbers for fast-food restaurants in Asia, the same thing is now happening in casual dining, he says.
'Who knows how long this trend is going to last? I want to capture it and milk it as much as I can.'
At 33, Ivan Lee is still a young man in a hurry, though one who has travelled very far in a very short time.
Report from The Business Times dated Fri, Jul 08, 2011
From S$ 45K a year, he now owns a S$ 61 million firm
By Mindy Tan
It would take more than a modicum of self-confidence to match Eric Cheng's purposeful drive. From the energy that he emanates through his firm handshake and confident stride, to the decisions he has had to make as an entrepreneur, there is a dynamism to him that might make a lesser man quake.
The prospect of walking away from a steady job when Singapore was still grappling with the effects of its worst-ever recession in 2001 would have given most people pause, but not Mr Cheng. Today he is the chief executive of the ECG Group of Companies, and owner of several businesses, mainly in property sales and development, and lifestyle services.
A flight steward with Singapore Airlines for eight years before he left in 2002, Mr Cheng recalls: 'I was in my mid-twenties, and I knew I couldn't fly forever. I've always wanted to be a businessman, so I started looking around for business opportunities.'
Even though Mr Cheng dabbled in different businesses, ranging from abalone trading, to car-wash services, he was constantly drawn back to property, a passion he had nurtured from a young age. He later attained his qualifications to be a licensed property agent, and started working part-time while still flying with SIA.
'I think all businessmen need to work through a couple of businesses before you know what you really want to do, and I found it eventually,' Mr Cheng says.
It was not until he met a monk whom he served on a flight to Taiwan that he made up his mind to return to his first love, property.
'The monk showed me the bigger picture. In life, it's not about chasing money. You've got to work hard, in a job you are passionate about, and the money will come naturally,' he notes.
Less than three months later, Mr Cheng walked out on his S$45,000-a-year job, in the middle of a sluggish economy, although he had just got married, and was paying the mortgage on a S$790,000 condominium, and a new BMW 3-series.
Driven by 'hunger' and an awareness that he did not have the luxury of a basic pay as a safety net, Mr Cheng took the plunge into the soft property market with PropNex. His 18-hour work days paid off, and he was not only one of the top salesmen in the industry within the first year, but he also made his first million a year later, at the age of 28.
Buoyed by his success, in 2003, he set up ECG Property, which grew to over 1,500 agents within the span of two and a half years. The following year, he set up a programming and software firm, SG1Stop, to develop software and hardware to better manage operations. Shortly after, he set up ECG Development, a boutique property development firm.
ECG Development, which manages an average of 10 projects a year, has since acquired and developed landed property in Malaysia and Australia, and apartments in Bangkok. This year, Mr Cheng projects that these three markets would account for up to 46 per cent of the company's revenue.
In 2007, in a move that surprised many, Mr Cheng expanded beyond the property industry to set up SG Yacht, a luxury yacht rental operation. As the rest of the world struggled with the global financial crisis, he soldiered on, and added another set-up to his growing list of companies.
Working from the point of view that yachts should not just be available to the rich, he decided to make yachts available at affordable prices through chartering, and co-sharing programmes.
The following year, he formed ECG Events and Lifestyle, and interior design and construction firm SG Concept.
'To me, it's about perseverance; you also have to believe in yourself and you need to know what you want in life,' he says. 'Of course, along the way, I also learnt that it's more than that. In every business, you need projections, you need a product that you believe in, you need an exit plan, but above all, you need to have a team which shares your vision.'
Even as some companies struggled against the deep malaise that continued to mire them, Mr Cheng dived into fresh waters in 2009, and acquired a fish farm off Pasir Ris.
After purchasing the fish farm for more than S$700,000 and dropping another S$250,000 on renovations, Mr Cheng has turned it into one of the largest in Singapore, with more than 120 net-cages, and over 90 tonnes of various species of fish.
'I have always believed that the person who conquers the food market will be the next millionaire,' he says. 'I had been looking for a fishery for two years when I finally found one. Of course, my focus is still on property development, but one day, if we need to, we have a platform to grow our aquaculture arm.'
'Besides,' he quips, 'Singapore is surrounded by water; this is the best opportunity for us!'
Taking on the diverse industries that he has does not faze Mr Cheng, who doesn't believe in being dependent on just one business.
To tackle new industries, he says, you just need to boil it down to three basic questions.
'You must do your research,' he says, 'and it's not difficult because you just have to focus on three things: the market, the product, and the consumer. You must know who your market competitor is, how competitive your produce or service is in comparison, what premium you are able to provide, and ultimately, you have to know who the consumer you are targeting is.'
Not putting all your eggs in one basket is financially prudent, says Mr Cheng, who has seen the ECG Group of Companies' turnover in the first year grow an exponential 53 times, from slightly below S$600,000 to S$32 million in the third year. Last year, the group's nine subsidiaries raked in over S$61 million.
The humble founder, who was awarded the title of Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2011 Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards, credits his success to his team.
'I spend a lot of time making sure my staff are happy, making sure they feel a sense of ownership in the company,' he says. 'It's the team that makes ECG what it is. Most of my staff have been working with me for a long time and I always let them feel that this company belongs to all of us. I'm very transparent. My room and fixtures have no locks because I have nothing to hide from them!'
He concludes: 'The success of a businessman, or a business, is not about the businessman himself; it is teamwork that makes the team, and the team that makes the company a success. That is something we tend to forget.'
