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Singapore embarks on
entrepreneurship
By Tony Sitathan
SINGAPORE - When Landy Eng first came to
Singapore almost five years ago, he was amazed at the
cleanliness and the robotic efficiency of the country.
"Everything seems to work like clockwork in Singapore,
where it exudes an air of efficiency and cleanliness,"
he said. But he was also struck by its lack of
entrepreneurial spirit.
As an entrepreneur
himself, running businesses since the age of 10 when he
delivered newspapers, Landy had gradually moved on to
manage a modeling agency and later a
semiconductor-equipment manufacturer in the United
States before making it public and starting to look east
for his next conquest.
He first was drawn to
China, where he became one of the first American-Asians
to do business there, setting up a trading venture in
office commodities while representing OEM (original
equipment manufacturer) dealers in the United States. He
called it quits after the competition heated up but not
before grossing record sales of US$550 million per
annum.
He also started an assembly plant in the
Philippines and later started thinking of settling down
in Asia permanently, and made Singapore his second home
away from the United States. He now is a permanent
resident in Singapore, having decided that setting up
roots in the city-state presents him many opportunities
to influence others to look at entrepreneurialism as an
alternative way of working in Singapore.
Entrepreneurial activity in Singapore is low
compared with other Asian economies such as Taiwan or
Hong Kong. It is estimated that only one out of 10
people in Singapore is self-employed. Given the fact
that its population base is only 4 million,
entrepreneurs must at best play second fiddle to the
government, which is considered the No 1 employer in
terms of sheer size. Unofficial estimates maintain that
the Singapore government together with its linked
companies employ more than half a million people in the
island nation.
Singapore does not have a long
tradition with entrepreneurialism, and Landy feels that
it is not a nation of entrepreneurs but rather a nation
of managers who, while excellent, lacked the spirit of
inventiveness and did not risk thinking "out of the
box". He says, however, that the overall stifling
climate for risk-taking is gradually changing as the
government slowly changes its mindset regarding
self-made entrepreneurs. He now heads an angel venture
fund called Hao Ventures while operating a dot-com
company called eAngelz that is used in organizing
workshops and networking events for entrepreneurs across
the Asian region.
Landy has reached out to
hundreds of potential entrepreneurs forking out advice
and presenting opportunities to network with angel
investors, as well as being a sounding board for
entrepreneurs to sell their ideas. EAngelz' membership
list has grown from 1,000 in 1999 to more than 45,000 in
Singapore alone. He says angel investing ("angels" are
private investors who finance business start-ups or new
business ventures) is still new in Asia and many small
and medium-sized enterprises should tap the strengths
offered by angel investors since banks have
traditionally been slow to invest in SME-type businesses
and companies. "Where can entrepreneurs go to for
funding especially if they do not have a track record of
success?" he said.
Inderjit Singh, the founder
and chief executive officer of Infiniti Solutions, a
semiconductor test and assembly company established in
Singapore last year, says the environment in Singapore
is slowly changing for entrepreneurs. Inderjit Singh
himself if a highly successful entrepreneur who has
founded or invested in more than a dozen companies in
Asia. He started a local electronics trading company
called Tri Star Electronics Pte Ltd during the 1997
crisis and made it a hugely profitable business in
Singapore, since venturing into markets in India, China,
Bangladesh and the Middle East. He also started
TriSecurity Singapore, a systems and Internet security
company, and his last major investment was in a
semiconductor testing and assembly company called United
Test and Assembly Center (UTAC).
"When I started
UTAC, for instance, there were no immediate sources of
funding available in Singapore. I had to look for
private investors in Taiwan and Japan to jump-start my
operations," he said. But he says the mood has changed
markedly in Singapore.
Inderjit Singh has been a
member of parliament since 1998 and sits on the boards
of Standards, Productivity and Innovation for Growth
(SPRING). He is also a member of the Technopreneurship
Committee of Singapore that is involved in marrying
entrepreneurial elements into the mainstream of
Singapore. He is also the president of the Singapore
chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a global
organization responsible for promoting entrepreneurship
and business networks. "This attitude of the Singapore
government is slowly beginning to change with regards to
perceiving entrepreneurs and their contributions to
Singapore as well as identifying what qualities are
needed to nurture entrepreneurship and to fund such
enterprises," he said.
Since Singapore has
always taken a top-down approach, implementing
government policies that favored attracting foreign
direct investments by multinational corporations (MNCs)
into the country, it has overlooked some of the strong
potentials of having SMEs and entrepreneurs run
successful companies locally. Singh says it will take a
while before some of the recommendations made to the
government by his steering committee on
technopreneurship take effect.
He recalled when
he started UTAC, he had a tough time finding funders to
back his idea in Singapore since they were more
risk-averse at that time and called for very high levels
of guarantees for his business to succeed. His business
did in fact succeed and had a market capitalization of
more than US$142 million before he left UTAC to set up
Infiniti Solutions.
The Singapore government has
recently made it possible for technopreneurs under the
Technopreneur Pass scheme under the Economic Development
Board (EDB) to reach out to potential technopreneurs
from overseas as well. Now technopreneurs are eligible
to apply for a work permit or employment pass based on
their merit of having a sound business plan that is
approved by the EDB. So far more than 100 technopreneurs
from Britain, China, India and the United States have
decided to locate themselves and their companies in
Singapore. Although for the time being the scheme
attracts high-tech ideas and investments, it will later
be opened up to other feasible business ideas that serve
to develop the economy into, according to the
government, "a vibrant enterprise ecosystem, where it
acts as a natural ecosystem that is self-renewing and
self-sustaining, where new businesses would constantly
come into Singapore and venture out of Singapore."
Whether all this makes it much easier for small
and medium companies or entrepreneurs to operate in
Singapore is still an open question, as a lot more has
to be done than simply opening the floodgates, remarked
Jason Lim, a self-made businessman who ventured into the
recycling of plastics.
"Singapore still is a
long way off from countries like Taiwan and Hong Kong,
where entrepreneurs are faced with the do-or-die
mentality of success or failure," said Lim. "Singapore
is still very risk-averse and sheltered in its
decision-making process. Sometimes that can be a
stumbling block to its lead-up to be an entrepreneurs'
dream home in Asia."
(©2002 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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