By G. Sharmila
Johor-born Puan Chan Cheong only experienced electricity and piped water from the age of 13. Since then it has been a long and arduous journey for the self-made entrepreneur, who eventually founded two well-known companies in the Malaysian tech industry, namely Green Packet and P1. Here, he shares with KINIBIZ how he started out as an entrepreneur.
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“I was born in a very small rubber estate in Jaguh, Johor… It only had 100-plus households. I moved to Chaah when I was 13; that was when I first experienced piped water and electricity. Both my parents were rubber tappers and they had to feed 10 of us siblings. So as a child born in a rubber estate I was really carefree and felt that the family was happy, but even the opportunity for schooling was quite special for us,” recalled Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (or P1) chief executive officer and managing director Puan Chan Cheong.
“I remember my mum saying that if I could always get number one in class I wouldn’t have to work in the rubber plantation. So from childhood, I had the mindset of wanting to break free from poverty and my mother always encouraged me, saying that there are probably only two things that could change my life: one is to really study well so I wouldn’t have to work in a rubber plantation like my siblings, and she always told me to be my own boss and not to work for other people,” Puan added.
Puan Chan Cheong
According to Puan, he hated being poor as it was extremely limiting. “I was very fortunate to be the only child in my family who went through tertiary education. My mum had to sell the durian plantation to fund my education. So I was very fortunate to be able to study in the US.”
Puan studied at the University of Nebraska, where he had the chance to meet Warren Buffett and Michael Dell. “The university had a good creative centre for entrepreneurship and I was very active as a student in the entrepreneurship programme. I remember a convention where Michael Dell was a keynote speaker – he had just started Dell Computers in 1990 and was already doing quite well. He also had an extremely gorgeous wife; we seriously envied him on his very early success,” Puan said with a smile.
As he was always looking for opportunities, Puan started a business before he graduated, in 1992 while he was in his final year at university. “Before I graduated, with the help of my professor, I convinced four US companies to appoint me as their marketing consultant in this part of the world. They were in various areas – fashion, furniture, and even dealt with halal beef. Actually, I did not want to come back, being a kampung boy who had tasted the US freedom and the American dream.”
But Puan had made a promise to his mother to return to Malaysia. “Before she sent me off, there were two commitments she asked me to make: one, I was not to marry an ‘ang mo’ (Caucasian woman), and the second thing was, I was to come home after graduation. That was quite a tough thing to do but I had to keep the promise because of the family bond and values,” he said.
“So I came back but I knew I wanted to be my own boss; even before I started with the four US companies I told them I was going back to Malaysia to start my own business. Every one of them paid me a US$1,000 pay cheque as a retainer for consulting and, on top of that, if I managed to market their products, I would earn a commission. For a fresh graduate in 1992 with a US$4,000 pay cheque, I was very fortunate I had a good base to start with,” he added.
Puan managed to successfully market the products for the four companies. “I think I was the first person to bring halal beef to the country from the US, because at the time the majority of beef came from India and the premium beef from Australia. So I got a slaughterhouse in Omaha halal-certified. That was really one of the major products that brought me the most profits during the early days,” he explained.
China beckons
But Puan’s ambitions did not end there. With the money he made from consulting, he went to China, which he had first been to in 1991 while still an undergraduate in the US.
“While I was studying in the US, one of my professors was doing a lot of consulting work in China and I was his research assistant, doing interpretation and research work for him. The first time I landed at the Beijing airport, I was shocked at the number of people and bicycles on the streets. There were just so many people. It was at that time that I knew that China had great potential,” he recalled.
Through the contacts Puan had made in China, he went back to China in 1993 and managed to convince one of the cities in Guangdong to appoint him as an investment consultant to bring in foreign investment. The first deal he closed in 1993 was for a joint venture to undertake an infrastructure privatisation project in Guangdong, where he was paid 5% of the 60 million yuan project. He was only 25 then.
“Then I became a lot more ambitious. I went to different provinces and told them: ‘See, I have the capability of bringing in huge foreign funding, why not give me a toll road concession?’” he said, adding that he set up a shell company for this purpose. Two years later, he landed a 250 million yuan toll road concession project for the HangZhou Fuyang toll road with a 30-year concession period. He then sold the concession at a premium of RM4 million to Bridgecon Bhd and for a 10% stake in the project.
Puan next bagged a 320 million yuan concession for the Guilin Airport toll road in 1996. He eventually sold it to Jasatera Bhd and Bridgecon for RM6 million and retained a 15% stake in the project.
What did he learn from his experience in China? Puan said his biggest lesson was that he learned to be comfortable with ambiguity. This was because among the challenges he faced there were unclear regulations, bureaucracy, lack of transparency and difficulty carrying out the contract terms, among others. He added that he also learned to be persistent and realised that relationships were the key to unlocking opportunities.
But Puan’s journey as an entrepreneur was only beginning. In our next article he talks about his experiences with Silicon Valley and then starting businesses in Malaysia.
Tomorrow: From Silicon Valley to Malaysia
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