Commentary
Singapore’s most important AI companies are the ones nobody notices
Their business? Solving everyday problems facing small- and medium enterprises.
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Most SMEs in these sectors are still struggling through digitalisation, says the writer.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Vaughn Tan
Tan Kah Kee built a business empire the South-east Asian way: one viable business at a time. After his family rice trading firm collapsed in 1903, he spent his last 7,000 Straits dollars to open a pineapple canning factory at Sembawang. He knew the pineapple market from his rice trading years: demand existed, he had seen it directly, and the execution was straightforward. His cannery’s cashflow funded rubber and pineapple plantations, then biscuit, tyre, and rubber factories, and eventually a shipping line to export directly to the West.
Other local fortunes were built the same way. Eu Tong Sen’s tin mines funded a tin smelter, then a bank, and a large real estate portfolio. Aw Boon Haw’s pharmaceuticals company (the makers of Tiger Balm) paid for a newspaper network in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, then a bank.