[ST] Trans-cab towkay
Teo Kiang Ang: Ambition, industry and a bit of
luck
Mr Teo Kiang Ang, head honcho
of Trans-cab, breaks out into jovial laughter when his deputy chief
comes into the conference room and dumps a huge stack of paper in
front of him.
They are, she tells him,
tender documents to operate bus routes. Earlier this year, the
authorities announced plans to massively overhaul the public bus
industry with a new contracting system. From 2016, the Government
will own all buses and infrastructure while paying transport firms
to operate routes.
Asked if he is going to help
himself to a slice of the pie, the 64-year-old replies bashfully
that he is just exploring possibilities.
If he does, it will add to the
list of businesses he has started, one which includes shipbuilding,
food and beverage, as well as mattress manufacturing.
Mr Teo, however, is best known
as a gas tycoon and taxi towkay.
The secondary school dropout
made a living delivering gas cylinders more than 40 years ago but
now owns Union Energy Corporation, which controls more than 30 per
cent of the bottled gas market and has an annual revenue of $130
million.
In 2003, he went into the then
newly liberalised taxi trade and started Trans-cab with just 50
vehicles. It is now the second largest taxi operator here with a
fleet of nearly 5,000 taxis; its turnover last year was more than
$174 million.
For as long as he can
remember, Mr Teo has wanted his own little piece of the
sky.
"I may be small, but my spirit
is big," he says with a laugh, speaking in Mandarin.
As he was born poor and did
not have much of an education, he reckoned the only way he could
climb out of poverty was by going into business.
Ambition, fuelled by
doggedness, industry and a bit of luck, helped him realise his
dream and made him a millionaire many times over.
He arrived penniless in
Singapore from Swatow in China when he was 10 years old in 1960,
after travelling for seven days on a rickety boat with his
mother.
Their prospects looked
bleak.
Mr Teo's father - a bus
conductor and odd job labourer who had left China several years
earlier - was in Tan Tock Seng Hospital with tuberculosis when his
family arrived.
"He was in the hospital for
six years. Occasionally, the hospital would call, telling us to
rush down because he might not make it, and one day he just went,"
he recalls.
"I was not close to him. I
grew up in China without a father and it was strange to have one
when we came to Singapore."
To make ends meet, his mother
became a washerwoman and later a live-in maid.
"I was left alone and saw her
once every two weeks," says Mr Teo, who lived with his maternal
grandmother in a village in Hougang.
He spent a year in Guang Ming
Primary before transferring to Holy Innocents' where he dropped out
after completing Secondary 1. It was not by choice, he says. "Money
was too tight."
A trading company in Rochor
Road hired him as a general dogsbody. "I swept the floors, cleaned
the toilets, ate and slept in the company and was paid $30 a
month," says Mr Teo, who stayed with the company for five years.
"But I also learnt a lot - how to do business, how to deal with
people."
It did not take him long to
realise that a much bigger world awaited him.
"I used to keep a diary and I
would write in it every night, telling myself I had to build my own
business," he says.
But he had to bide his time
and wait until he was 21, as was the law in those days, before he
could register a business.
He started Yong Huk - which
dealt in porcelain as well as plastic household items - in the
early 1970s with $3,000 cobbled from his savings and a loan from
his mother. It was a one-man show, and the going was
tough.
"I was salesman and delivery
boy and I had to go all over Singapore. I started early in the
morning and ended late at night," he says.
Despite his best efforts, the
venture failed and folded two years later because of cash flow
problems.
"It was hard to get credit and
hard to collect payment. But I don't regret the experience. I met
so many people and learnt so much; my skin grew a lot thicker in
the process."
The experience bruised but did
not break him.
After some soul searching, he
decided that supplying bottled gas would be lucrative, as Housing
Board flats were being built rapidly during the early
1970s.
"I thought about it carefully.
Wood had given way to coal to kerosene to gas. I told myself gas
was the next big thing and went in," he says.
A friend lent him $2,000 to
start Choon Hin in 1975.
Come rain or shine, he would
carry and deliver gas cylinders, some of which weighed twice his
50kg frame, to all corners of the island.
The business grew
rapidly.
"In my first couple of months,
I earned just over $1,000. But this quickly grew to several
thousands and then tens of thousands," says Mr Teo, who landed the
distributorship for CalGas in 1985.
His earnings hit a plateau
when the company exited the market. His margins became lower
because of tight controls by the big boys who wanted to close the
supply vacuum.
"I knew we had to bottle our
gas," says Mr Teo, who started distributing gas under his own brand
Union in 1995.
The big game changer came in
2000 when he bought Summit Gas and its gas bottling plant in Jalan
Buloh for just over $1 million.
As most of his money was tied
up in assets, he dug into his savings and remortgaged his delivery
vehicles to raise the capital.
"I was very excited because I
knew if I had my own plant, my business would be very
different."
Indeed, his business
multiplied many times after that. From just $6 million in 2000, his
annual revenue now exceeds $130 million.
Today, Union Energy is the
market leader in the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) trade. Its
clients include not just households but also food outlets,
government bodies, educational institutions, country clubs and
companies. Besides supplying LPG, it also retails products such as
stoves and cooker hoods, as well as offer services like
installation and maintenance of LPG piping.
Mr Teo also harboured big
dreams for compressed natural gas (CNG) and even opened three CNG
refilling stations including the world's largest in Old Toh Tuck
Road five years ago. But that dream fizzled when the Government
imposed a tariff on CNG in 2012 which narrowed the gap between the
prices of gas and traditional fuels.
The setback irked him but he
moved on.
"I never regret what I do
because I would have always learnt something. There's no point
having a negative attitude. We should always look ahead and start
again," he says.
The foray into CNG was not the
first setback for Mr Teo who also started a shipbuilding company, a
restaurant and a mattress firm.
The first failed and cost him
"a bungalow"; the second was sold because it required too much
attention; the third was moderately profitable and given to one of
his staff to run.
In 2003, when the Government
liberalised the taxi trade, he decided to invest $3 million to
start Trans-cab and become a taxi operator.
"Not many people dared to
enter the fray because the rules and regulations were so daunting.
But I've always relished challenges in business," he says. He is
chairman of Trans-cab, which acquired rival operator Smart Taxis
last year.
An avid reader of Chinese
classics such as Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, he says being
successful in business is all about finding equilibrium.
"Making money shouldn't always
be your starting point. Trust is also important. Often you have to
put yourself in the shoes of the other party to come up with a
winning solution for everyone," he says.
Without affectation, he says
he enjoys a good relationship with his taxi drivers. He became
friends with many while selling diesel to them.
"They don't need to come and
look for me, I would go and look for them. I'm always downstairs,"
he says, referring to the busy compound outside Trans-cab's
headquarters in Defu Lane 1 where his drivers gather.
Asked if they often harangue
him with complaints, he laughs: "I'm not afraid of complaints.
Complaints are to me a challenge and a good way to improve
myself."
Although he has worked very
hard, he believes that luck has played a big part in getting him to
where he is.
In 2007, he shelled out $25
million to buy a 5,413 sq m site in Kallang which included the
Oasis building.
"I had already firmed up plans
to build a floating hotel, something Singapore has never seen
before, and a floating stage," he says.
But these plans were nixed
when the Government, under the Land Acquisition Act, bought him out
barely three months later to develop the Sports Hub. However, there
was a silver lining to the whole affair as he was paid $42 million
for the site.
Mr Teo has seven children aged
between 16 and 37, and nine grandchildren, the eldest of whom is
10.
"I don't have a family, I have
a tribe," he says, suddenly lapsing into English.
Five of his children are now
working for him.
"There comes a time in life
when you have to let go and I'm starting to learn how to do that
now," he says.
But if a new business
opportunity arises, he is still game to take it on.
"Because it's a challenge and
I love challenges."
