A leader who inspired my life

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Robert Kwok

Mr Robert Kwok is a Malaysian Chinese billionaire businessman. Among the most successful tycoons who rule the business-world he is a living legend. He has many businesses such as sugar-cane, oil, mining, flour, hotels, publishing and animal feed businesses. Whatever business he touched, all business will strike with huge success in.

How he success?

Kwok’s story is one of those inspiring rags-to-riches saga. His up-hill climb started as an office-boy, after which he became the clerk of a rice trading department in Singapore.

Robert Kwok was a quick learner. Three years in the rice trading department helped him learn the trading business. He later began back the same in his home town of Johor along with his brothers and a cousin.

Shortly after that, he founded the Malayan sugar manufacturing co, which quickly gained popularity. It went on to become a monopoly in sugar production space of Malaysia producing 80% of Malaysia’s sugar and 10% of world’s sugar. That’s precisely how Kwok got his nick name, ‘the sugar king of Asia’.

What he did?

Establishing monopoly was not easy. Naturally, this ambitious and immensely clever businessman did not just stop at that. He started a chain of hotels, the famous ‘Shangri-la’ which is now spread out through the world and is all set to open its 71st hotel.

The 91 year old now has a lot of investments in huge businesses in nearly all of the Asian countries, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and lot of other non-Asian countries. With so many businesses in so many countries, this incredible business man believes that he is the “little string that ties the rings together”.

Experts would often say that his speed and cleverness led to that near-impossible success. Also, the man, they say, was never afraid to collaborate with the rest of the world unlike the eastern businessmen of the early 20th century and that was one more thing that led to him being one of the most successful businessmen of the east. As per the Forbes list, Robert Kwok was declared the Richest Man of Malaysia and the Second Richest in South East Asia. In the Forbes’ list of the richest men of 2013, he was ranked at 76th place.

Kwok, who is now retired, will always be revered as one of the foremost eastern business men who gave birth to multinational business ventures for Malaysia and the world. His talent in business is unparalleled and his story continues to awe and inspire a lot of businessmen throughout the globe.