by Tng Ying Hui
Tan, who became a Singaporean in 1973, has amassed a total of 29 national and international accolades, among which is the Cultural Medallion, which he won in 1987, and the Meritorious Service Medal, which he received in 2003. That year he also received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award which honours artists for helping to make the world a better place.
References
Su-Yin Yap, “A Multifaceted Singaporean Painter Breaks Barriers,” The New York Times, Jan 12, 2015.
Koh Yuen Lin, “Tan Swie Hian–a Multifaceted Man,” The Peak, July 3, 2015,
http://thepeakmagazine.com.sg/2015/07/tan-swie-hian-a-multifaceted-man/
Kerri Heng, “Top Painter Saves cat First During Blaze,” The New Paper, January 16, 2013.
“Tan Swie Hian Fables,” The Straits Times, January 30, 1996.
Interview with Tan Swie Hian via email in June 2015.
Tan Swie Hian
Indonesia, b.1943
ECONOMY
Mustaq Ahmad
India
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Sir Laurence Hartnett
United Kingdom
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Dr Tsutomu Kanai
Japan
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Lien Ying Chow
CHina
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Pasquale Pistorio
Italy
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Captain Muhammad Jalaluddin Sayeed
india
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Tang I-Fang
China
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Ratan Tata
India
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Kartar Singh Thakral
Thailand
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Tan Sri Frank Tsao Wen-King
China
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Alain Vandenborre
Belgium
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Cyril Neville Watson
United Kingdom
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Albert Winsemius
Netherlands
Mustaq Ahmad
A Prodigious Peddler
The lack of a prestigious MBA has not prevented India-born Mustaq Ahmad from turning his makeshift street stall into a multi-million dollar retail business. Mustafa Centre, which he built in Little India, is the go-to place for both local and overseas shoppers on the hunt for a good deal, for just about any basic essentials, and more.
Mustaq Ahmad arrived in Singapore from Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1956 when he was five years old. Throughout his childhood, he peddled tea, bread and handkerchiefs from a pushcart with his father and uncle. When he became older, he began selling handkerchiefs next to his father’s stall. His father saw the potential of Mustaq’s venture, and it galvanised him to set up a makeshift store at Campbell Lane selling clothes for adults and children.
Mustaq left school after Secondary Four to work full-time at his family’s enterprise. When the government imposed a ban on street stalls in the 1970s, he convinced his father to move into a permanent space in Campbell Lane. It was named Mohamed Mustafa & Samsuddin, after his father and uncle. Their enterprise took off, and the family went on to rent a larger space along Serangoon Road in order to expand their business. In 1995, Mustaq acquired a row of shophouses along Syed Alwi Road and built the Mustafa Centre, a six-storey building. He also renovated the old store at Serangoon Road and reopened a branch of Mustafa Centre there. The two buildings are a stone’s throw away from each other.
Reflecting on his choice to drop out of school to focus on building a business, Mustaq said in a 2006 interview with The Straits Times, “Talent is not just about paper qualifications. It’s really people doing something with passion and a great deal of interest.” A dedicated businessman, Mustaq, who became a Singapore citizen in 1991, is known for this work ethic, arriving early at the office and leaving late.
He has tried to impart his work ethic and business acumen to his four children. They have all had a stint on the shop floor, as Mustaq believes that serving customers is the best way to learn the ropes of the retail business. He said in a 1996 interview with The Business Times that sales personnel “have the best ideas”. Mustaq himself closely watches consumer habits so that he can stock his store, popularly known just as “Mustafa”, to meet their needs.
Mustafa has a straightforward business model—it offers customers competitive prices for a wide range of goods because these goods are bought directly from the production source. Each department has dedicated buyers who are responsible for the direct sourcing of products, even travelling to the countries where the products are made.
Mustafa has become a shopping haven for those living in Singapore and a must-see attraction for tourists who flock there to buy goods at a bargain. The store is now spread across 400,000 sq ft, the size of almost seven football fields, and it sells over 300,000 products. These range from jewellery to gold bars; from perfumes to hiking shoes; and from electronics to Chaunsa mangoes from Pakistan.
To cope with the increasing volume of international customers, Mustafa Centre has hired sales people who speak different languages, and also built two extensions to the original shopping mall. And, it is always open. The idea to operate around the clock stemmed from the 24-hour service that emergency rooms in hospitals provide. “Some people need goods at odd hours,” Mustaq rationalised. The centre is open even on public holidays.
Mustafa has been successful on most fronts, but not all of its innovations have turned out as planned. Before online shopping became popular, it launched a mail-order business in 1994 to provide special services to international shoppers who could order the products online and have them sent to the airport as part of their baggage. This was extended to a full-fledged online shopping experience in 1998 where customers could browse the product catalogue and purchase them through Mustafa Centre’s website. During the year that the service was available, sales peaked at
$1 million a month in June. But the auto service payment ground to a halt in July 1999 when the system was bedeviled by security issues such as credit card fraud. Its online website, Mustafa.com.sg, is now used for advertising its offerings and not for direct selling to consumers.
Today, Mustafa proudly says on its website that it has an annual sales volume of $725 million and employs over 1,800 staff. Recognising Mustaq's accomplishments in Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his 2006 National Day Rally speech said, “You get the right foreigner here, he creates thousands of jobs for Singaporeans, like Mr Mustaq. And you need to get more people like him.”
References
“3 Indian-origin businessmen in Singapore’s Top 40: Forbes,” The Economic Times, July 28, 2011.
“About Mustafa,” Mustafa Centre, accessed February 2015,
http://www.mustafa.com.sg/frmAboutUs.aspx
Bharat Bhaskar, Electronic Commerce: Framework, Technologies and Application
(India: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2009).
“Create Distinctive Niches to Gain an Edge, Retailers Told,” The Straits Times, July 5, 1995.
Edna Koh, “Mustafa Let Down by E-Commerce,” The Straits Times, December 13, 1999.
Zakir Hussein, “S’pore Needs More Talented Foreigners Like Mustafa’s Managing Director,”
The Straits Times, August 21, 2006.
S. Tsering Bhalla, “At least 180,000 shoppers throng the store each year,” The Straits Times, September 23, 1994.
“The Man who Built Mustafa Centre,” The Business Times, November 30, 1996.
Mustaq Ahmad
India, b.1951
Sir Laurence Hartnett
Man of Armour
Englishman Sir Laurence Hartnett’s confidence in Singapore’s engineering and manufacturing capabilities led to the establishment of its first defence technology firm, which became a centrepiece for the independent country’s industrialisation efforts. The firm is now part of the multinational Singapore Technologies Engineering, with Singapore able to sell defence systems to major world powers.
When newly-independent Singapore was establishing its own
military, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), then-Minister for the Interior and Defence Dr Goh Keng Swee believed that it was crucial to develop defence-related companies that could support the SAF while being commercially viable. By April 1968, the first home-grown defence company, Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS), was producing small arms ammunition, and was on its way to manufacturing other types of armament.
Sir Laurence Hartnett’s advice and assistance was invaluable to the endeavour. At the opening of CIS, Dr Goh, who had then taken on the Finance portfolio, said that Sir Laurence had, after assessing the skills of workers and engineers in Singapore, recommended that the government proceed with manufacturing ammunition, even when other experts believed that the high standard of precision engineering required for such industries could not be achieved in Singapore. Sir Laurence had also stressed that the quality of production was paramount. Said Dr Goh, “He predicted that when other armament manufacturers visit the plant and see for themselves how standards are maintained, this would lead to expansion in other fields. This forecast has happily come to fruition.” Indeed, local industries went on to benefit from the expertise and business activity generated by CIS. In a 1997 interview, Dr Goh said, “CIS was a centrepiece of Singapore’s effort in industralisation.”
Sir Laurence had an impressive career that spanned several continents. Born in the United Kingdom, he joined an armaments firm after leaving school and trained as a pilot with the Royal Navy Air Service and Royal Air Force towards the end of World War I. In 1923, he accepted a job in Singapore, importing and marketing motor vehicles for trading firm Guthrie and Co. In February 1925, he married his childhood sweetheart Gladys Winifred Tyler at St Andrew’s Cathedral. The couple had three daughters of whom the youngest and only surviving one, Deirdre Barnett, now lives in Australia.
Sir Laurence was energetic and ambitious. Subsequently, he took up the post of southern Indian field representative for General Motors Corporation, later doing stints in the United States and Sweden, before taking charge of exports for General Motors’ British subsidiary, Vauxhall Motors Ltd. In 1934, he joined General Motors-Holden Ltd in Australia and managed to turn the ailing company around, through overhauling management procedures, improving book-keeping and riding on the country’s economic revival by building and opening new assembly plants.
Sir Laurence prized public service, and following the outbreak of World War II, he helped Australia with its defence planning. In 1939, as director of ordnance production in the Australian Ministry of Munitions, Sir Laurence was responsible for constituting the Optical Munitions Panel which decided on ways to equip Australia’s defence industry. According to a biography of him in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he “found the frenetic pace of this work ‘wonderfully exhilarating’ and in January 1942 volunteered to fly to Singapore in a perilous last-ditch effort to salvage manufacturing equipment—a mission aborted when Japanese forces got there first.”
After the war, Sir Laurence resolved to help Australia develop its own automobile industry. At a time when car ownership was exclusively for the rich, he advocated a car which would be designed “within Australia by Australians to suit Australian conditions”. However, a disagreement with the American head office over car designs led to his removal as head of General Motors-Holden in December 1946, and while he was offered a position with General Motors Corporation in the United States, he chose to remain in Australia. It was around this time that
Dr Goh met Sir Laurence, who impressed him “a great deal”, the minister said in Singapore Technologies’ (ST) 30th anniversary commemorative book. Dr Goh invited Sir Laurence to advise the government on developing a defence industry in Singapore.
Sir Laurence’s first task at the CIS was to produce large quantities of 5.56mm rounds, the most commonly used bullets. While doing so, he noticed a problem: the humidity in Singapore dampened the explosives that filled the cartridges. So he visited the British naval base and decided that the filling operations could be carried out in a cold room. CIS’ first product, the 5.56mm rounds, was used for the M-16 rifles, the service rifle of the SAF. He tried to lobby for 240 acres of swampland in Jurong for the factory but had to settle for 69 acres—a luxury in land-scarce Singapore. CIS managed to stay competitive in a cut-throat small-arms industry owing to his innovations, Dr Goh said in the ST commemorative book. When Singapore wanted to expand beyond producing ammunition in 1972, Sir Laurence suggested starting Ordnance Development & Engineering (ODE), an engineering company for weapons development. Although the fledging ODE grappled with difficulties in the beginning, by 1988, it had unveiled Singapore’s first locally-designed howitzer—the FH-88.
Today, ST Engineering is amongst Asia's largest defence and engineering groups. According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published in 2013, Singapore is ranked the world’s 20th biggest arms exporter—a notable feat given the country’s small size. Singapore sealed a $286 million deal with the United Kingdom in 2008, delivering 115 of its locally-designed Broncos. These armoured all-terrain carriers were deployed in Afghanistan in 2010 by the British Army. The news made waves in the field because the sale debunked the widely-held perception that small states do not export defence systems to major powers.
Sir Laurence died in 1986 in Frankston, a suburb of Melbourne in Australia. While he did not live to see the recent successes of Singapore’s defence industry, he often spoke with great pride about the role he had played in Singapore’s industrial development, said Sir Laurence’s friend, Arthur Ranken, whom he was acquainted with in the last 13 years of his life.
Sir Laurence was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 1967 and awarded the Public Service Star in 1973.
References
Bhavan Jaipragas, “Singapore Gains Toehold in World Arms Industry,” Defense News,
March 18, 2012.
Hoe Pei Shan, “Singapore is World’s 20th Biggest Arms Exporter,” The Straits Times, March 21, 2013,
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-is-worlds-20th-biggest-arms-exporter
Ron Matthews and Curie Maharani, “Singapore’s Arm Sales to UK: A Defence Export Breakthrough,” RSIS Commentaries, January 2, 2009.
Joe Rich, “Sir Laurence John Hartnett,” Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2007,
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hartnett-sir-laurence-john-12602
Interviews with Arthur Ranken via email in July 2015, and Deirdre Barnett over the phone
in September 2015.
Sir Laurence Hartnett
United Kingdom, 1898-1986
Dr Tsutomu Kanai
Lighting the Path to Growth
Japan-born Dr Tsutomu Kanai recognised Singapore’s potential as a manufacturing hub. As president of Japanese giant Hitachi, Ltd in the 1990s, he expanded the conglomerate’s businesses here, including setting up a wafer fabrication plant. Hitachi became one of Singapore’s largest investors and employers.
Born in 1929, Dr Tsutomu Kanai joined Hitachi in Tokyo in 1958, his early life mirroring that of bright young men in an industrialising post-war society. Dr Kanai had a PhD from the University of Tokyo, and in the early 1960s, he spent time away from Hitachi doing nuclear physics research in the United States.
Upon his return to Japan, he rose through the ranks, taking on various management roles in Hitachi’s different business divisions, including power and industrial systems and heavy electric equipment. He was elected president in 1991, the year Japan’s property market crashed. Under his presidency, Hitachi not only survived the financial crisis, but it even expanded overseas. It was under his charge that Hitachi established numerous subsidiaries in Singapore, focusing on a wide range of business activities such as elevators and ICT (information and communications technology) solutions.
Hitachi’s relationship with Singapore goes back a long way. After Singapore became independent in 1965, the Singapore government endeavoured to create a manufacturing sector that would export to the world.
A growing population and lack of jobs meant that there was an ample supply of labour. Hitachi had already set up a liaison office in Singapore but after 1965, it launched into various sectors, including the assembly of consumer electronics, cables and printed circuit boards. It continued to do so well into the 1990s, hiring thousands of Singaporeans.
Dr Kanai is best-remembered for keeping faith with Singapore during the 1990s. Then, the Singapore government aspired to position the city-state as a competitive regional and global city. It was ramping up its efforts in infrastructure and manpower development to woo high-technology and high value-added industries to set up shop. High labour costs in Singapore were already pushing companies to move their factories into cheaper Asian markets.
The Singapore government saw Hitachi—then one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies—as a crucial partner in Singapore’s vision to build a wafer fabrication plant cluster to serve the semiconductor industry. Then-managing director of Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), Lim Swee Say, went to Japan to persuade Kanai to invest in Singapore. The Hitachi president readily agreed.
In July 1996, Hitachi established its 64-megabit dynamic random access memory (DRAM) wafer fabrication plant in collaboration with the EDB, and Nippon Steel, the world’s largest steel producer. Each company held a 35% stake in the Hitachi Nippon Steel (HNS) semiconductor project and the EDB had a 30% stake. The total cost of their investment was around $1.33 billion. The plant employed about 600 people in its production of DRAM—the computer’s main memory component. At that time, the 64-megabit chip was the latest invention in the market. HNS manufactured logic devices such as LCD drivers and microcontrollers. A year after the Hitachi-Nippon-EDB deal was sealed, Hitachi was conferred the Distinguished Partner Progress Award—the highest national recognition to companies that have made outstanding economic contributions to Singapore. Hitachi continued to expand its Singapore business. Later, it expanded its DRAM manufacturing plants from countries like the USA and Germany to Singapore. The HNS semiconductor plant in Singapore was one of Hitachi’s overseas hub plants.