The Straits Times / The Business Times News on Hyflux

They took the first step

THE hortatory message of the past decade or so has been the importance of entrepreneurs. Mere competence is passe.

Today's darling is the dashing starter-up of new enterprise. He, or quite often nowadays, she, is vigorous and innovative - a taker of risks, not just a hewer of wood or a drawer of water.

The five people BT features this week are an inspiration to one and all.

Here is the feature on Hyflux's Olivia Lum:

OLIVIA LUM

There is no surer way to know that you are a bona fide success story, than to be name checked by a Cabinet minister. Last week, Dr Ng Eng Hen, the Minister of Manpower, asked a gathering of NUS students: 'You want to know if you could be like the next Olivia Lum?'

'Could she have imagined when she graduated from the chemistry department of NUS, that she would one day helm a successful company with international business operations or that she would be dubbed the 'Water Queen', and listed as the youngest, and only female, member of the Forbes Asia South-east Asia's 40 richest business people?'

'Perhaps she did. Are there any among you with a similar dream and passion?'

She started off, as Dr Ng went on to say, with a good idea, and a motorbike, with which to sell that dream.

Orphaned at birth in Perak, she was adopted and raised by someone she calls her grandmother. From such Oliver Twist-esque beginnings, she now runs Hyflux, a $900 million company employing over 800 people. She was last year's Businessman of the Year - the prettiest winner, she said, and the only woman to win it ever.

She started after graduation as a small-time chemist at Glaxo Pharmaceuticals, but quit in 1989. She sold her condo and car to raise funds for her good idea and her motorbike. She chugged through Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, knocking on doors to sell her water filters and treatment systems.

Business boomed. China came next, then the Middle East. The next big thing for her, it seems, is to move from recycling water to recycling oil. Along the way, she amassed a considerable fortune.

She is now a chapter of the Singapore success story. Young? Check. Female? Check. Foreign talent (she was a Malaysian) who made good and became a Singaporean? Check. High-tech high value-add company? Check. International operations? Check.

A writer of corporate success stories couldn't have done better.