The MP Who Built a $2B Company Singapore Didn’t Believe In

In the late 1990s, Asia was collapsing.

Banks were pulling credit lines.

Currencies were in freef fall. And in

Singapore, most people clung to whatever

stability they could find. And yet, in

this storm, one man made a move so

audacious few could make sense of. He

mortgaged his house to start two new

businesses in 2 years. At the very

moment, others would simply be cutting

back. What followed would put him in

rare company, one of the few

Singaporeans to build a billion-dollar

business. But his story doesn't end

there because he wasn't content with

just building a company. He wanted to do

more to build a better Singapore. The

battles he fought in business would

later echo in parliament where he tried

to make the system one that more

Singaporeans would actually be proud of.

This is the story of Interjit Singh and

why what he fought for still matters for

every Singaporean today. Before we

begin, welcome to What makes a country.

I'm Ken Chong, your host and on this

channel we uncover the hidden

architecture behind successful

countries. Our focus is on the policies,

institutions and businesses that create

lasting thriving societies. Interjit's

story begins humbly. He grew up in a

Malay village near Jalang Yunos, the son

of a watchman, the only non-Malay in

primary school, Hakit Buki Primary. He

went on to pursue his bachelor's

electrical engineering at Nayan

Technological University, NTEU after

steen at Broadri Secondary and Tamasic

Junior College. By the mid 1990s, Singh

had carved out a stable career at Texas

Instrument TI, learning how the global

semiconductor industry ticked. He could

have stayed there slowly climbing up the

corporate ladder. But right before the

Asian financial crisis erupted in 1997,

he launched Tristar Electronics, a

distributor of electronic components

with his brothers. Banks slammed their

doors. Investors disappeared. No one

wanted to back a startup in a crowded

low margin industry. But Singh refused

to quit. He mortgaged his house and even

put down his life savings just to

convince one reluctant bank to back him.

And it set the stage for what came next.

A year later in 1998, the semiconductor

industry was also in crisis. The giants

integrated device manufacturers like TI

where Singh had worked were under siege.

Revenues were plunging. Factories of

bleeding cash. Most analysts assumed the

response was obvious. In a downturn,

pull production back in house tighten

control and weather the storm. But Sing

saw the cracks forming into something

bigger. He believed that the very

weakness of the moment will accelerate a

different trend. Outsourcing. If cheap

makers rely more on external partners

during bad times, they could actually

shield their own factories from

collapse. And when the next cycle turned

south, in other words, what looked like

retrenchment to everyone else look to

sing like the opening of a floodgate. He

founded United Test and Assembly Center

or better known as UTAC to seize the

opportunity. But in Singapore, no one

wanted to touch it. Local investors were

too cautious and too conservative.

Raising the kind of capital he needed

looked impossible. So Singh turned

abroad to Taiwan where he had built

relationships during his Texas

Instruments years. There in a single

marathon meeting, he walked out with

commitments of more than USD $100

million, one of the largest seat raises

ever attempted by a Singaporean, and

secured in the middle of a crisis, no

less. But even then, he refused to make

UTEK purely foreign backed. If this was

going to be Singapore's chance to prove

he could build a homegrown tech

champion, then Singaporeans had to have

skin in the game. Sing insisted that 30%

of the company's ownership must belong

to local Singaporean investors. And so,

after being turned away once, he circled

back to the very same Singapore

financiers who had dismissed him. This

time faced with his Taiwanese war

shares, they relented and put in another

$38 million. And with more capital race

than he had ever expected, New Tech was

suddenly equipped to break into the big

leagues. Opportunity appeared in the

ruins of failure. Micropolis, a this

drive maker, had gone bankrupt. His

liquidators were desperate to offload a

massive 400,000 square ft clean rune

factory to Singh's team and his

investors. The building was cursed. It

was twice the size that they needed,

twice the cost they had budgeted for and

carried the backlog of a company they

had already failed within his walls.

They urged him to simply walk away. But

Sing saw the opposite. If they could

secure it cheaply and if this building

could jump start UTK overnight, no

delays, no construction cuz it was all

ready to go. The decision was made a

single all cash beat minutes before the

deadline was made. Against every

prediction, it worked. He won the

factory at half price. What others saw

as a liability sing turned into a

launchpad. Within just two months, UTEK

was already profitable. Within 2 years,

it had broken into global top 10, the

ninth largest in the world, valued at

over US $2 billion, a unicorn before the

word even existed. The company even

secured approvals to lease on both

NASDAQ and the Singapore exchange. But

here's the irony. When Singh first

approached SGX, they wouldn't even take

the meeting. It was only after NASDAQ

gave the green light that Singapore's

own exchange came back asking SN to do a

list. It was a symbolic moment. Global

markets recognized what local

gatekeepers had dismissed. At a time

when Singapore's strategy was still

built on cing foreign giants, Singh had

shown a homegrown company could stand

alongside them. And yet for Singh, the

triumph was bittersweet. Behind the

billion dollar valuation lay hard

lessons about control, governance, and

just how fragile success can be. When

the tech bubble burst in 2002, UTK's

much anticipated IPO was caught off.

Investors grew nervous and some wanted

to cash out fast. Others pushed to raise

even more funds. Sing disagreed. UTE

wasn't desperate. He had cash assets and

a strong management team. There was no

need to panic. But not everyone saw it

that way. Among the Taiwanese board

members, one in particular had his own

agenda. He wanted to use Utech as a

bargaining chip, offering his share

cheaply to his friends, expecting favors

back in future deals. I scratch your

back, you scratch mine. To sing, it was

unthinkable. Selling shares cheaply will

slash the value of his own employees

stick because it will dilute it. The

very people who had taken a chance on

him from day one, whereas a few

well-connected insiders might walk away

with a bargain, but his own team who

have helped build UTC from scratch will

be short changed. For Singh, that was a

line he will not cross. But behind his

back, the boardroom shifted. The

Taiwanese director began to divide and

conquer, winning over even some of

Singh's most trusted key people. With a

Taiwanese block holding the majority,

Singh suddenly found himself

outmaneuvered and eventually forced out

of the very company he had built from

scratch. Looking back, Singh admitted he

had been too comfortable with his

investors. He had raised too much too

quickly and given away too much of his

equity. If he had raised half the

capital first, built value, and gone

back for more fund raise, the outcome

might have been entirely different. It

was a brutal lesson. Building a billion

dollar company was one thing. Holding on

to it in a cutthroat war of Asian

business alliances was another when the

battles over control began. Sing didn't

hold the right cuts. Across Asia many

business tycoon learned to thrive in

exactly this kind of environment. And in

upcoming conversation I'll be speaking

with Cedric Chin who has DV studied how

they mastered those struggles for power

and survival. You can watch it here. But

going back to singing's story, what

makes it so remarkable was that even as

he was building Tristar and UTEK and

facing all these trials and

tribulations, he already stepped into

public service. He became an MP in 1996.

He was balancing the weight of not just

his company, his young family with three

kids and also the demands of

representing Amoko. Most entrepreneurs

were seen politics as simply a

distraction, something that pulled them

away from the business. For Singh, it

became another arena to fight the very

same battles. Because the problem that

Singh had run into, whether it was

scarce funding, cautious institutions,

or rising costs, weren't just his, they

were actually systemic. And in

parliament, he made it his mission to

speak for entrepreneurs like him. He

knew what it meant to be turned away by

banks and agencies. So he pushed for

co-investment funds that will put

government money alongside private

capital to give young founders the

backing that he himself has struggled to

find. He has seen how Singapore's

cautious instincts nearly strangled

UTEK. So he pressed for global venture

funds and engine networks to be welcomed

in rather than kept out. These were the

fixes he wished had existed when he was

fighting for survival. And when it came

to day-to-day business realities, Singh

was just as blunt. He warned that rising

rents and land costs were squeezing

margins for local firms. He pushed back

when foreign worker rules were tightened

overnight, arguing that smaller

companies often needed more time to

adjust. He knew from experience how

quickly policy or cost shocks could

unsettle a business and he wasn't afraid

to say so in parliament. Underlying all

this was a conviction Singh never

wavered from. Singapore could not bet

its future solely on foreign

multinationals. If cost rose and those

firms packed up for cheaper shores, what

would be left behind? Without nurturing

homegrown companies into tomorrow's

champions, Singapore could leave itself

dangerously exposed. And SN believed

that the hatch was right in front of us.

Singapore had the talent, the knowhow,

and the ambition. What it needed was

space for local firms to grow big, to

stand alongside the giants and not just

serve them. That conviction also

explains why for Singh the politics

itself was never about prestige. It was

public service. It was the same instinct

that made him insist that you that keep

30% of his equity in Singaporean hands

when fundraising. Growth to him had to

serve Singaporeans first, not leave them

as bystanders in their own economy. So

in 2013 when the government tabled his

controversial population white paper,

Singh broke ranks. Despite being the

deputy party whipped at the time, he

spoke up for ordinary Singaporeans

worried about overcrowding and cohesion.

It made him a rare figure in Singapore

politics, an insider willing to speak

like an outsider. To him, growth at all

costs will fracture society and he

called on the government of the day to

pause for five more years to fix the

strains created by past policy before

chasing the next growth trajectory. And

this wasn't an isolated stand. Singh's

concerns in parliament always circled

back to a deeper conviction that growth

had to close divides and not widen them.

He was worried that Singapore's systems

in education, wages, and even the

economy itself were drawing sharper

lines between those with opportunity and

those who were left behind. That was why

he criticized school streaming and the

gifted education program system, saying

that they branded children too early and

hardened class divides. It was why he

pushed for stronger wage support

schemes, warning that productivity gains

had to flow to workers and not just to

companies. Across all these debates, his

instinct was consistent. Policies had to

serve people ultimately. By 2015 though,

Singh had stepped away from parliament.

Prime Minister then Lisian Long wanted

him to stay on for another term, five

more years. But after nearly two decades

as an MP, he wanted to spend more time

with his family and returned to building

companies and mentoring entrepreneurs.

but the very imprint that he left behind

as an entrepreneur who carried lessons

from his ventures into parliament who

used that same entrepreneurial mindset

to speak bluntly about the trade-offs

behind policy and to push for a

Singapore that was both progrowth and

inclusive remains underappreciated in

the city's history even to today. Today

in his own capacity, Singh hasn't

stopped pushing. He argues that

Singapore must rediscover its appetite

for risk. Starting with manufacturing in

Taiwan and South Korea, manufacturing

still makes up around 30% of their GDP.

In Singapore, despite the highs that he

has reached previously, it has fallen

below 20% in recent years. To sing that

gap is a missed opportunity because

Singapore still has the engineers and

technicians many displaced in recent

years who could anchor a revival. His

vision is astute. Singapore could become

the prototyping factory of the world,

the place where companies takes ideas

from the lab and turn them into scalable

products. For that, he says, Singapore

needs a bolder strategy, manage costs,

keep industrial land affordable, and

always benchmark ourselves against

rivals like South Korea and Taiwan when

it comes to manufacturing. Indit Singh's

story is a reminder of what can be lost

when societies becomes really successful

because the success itself reshapes what

risks are taken in the future. He showed

how much it takes for one individual to

push a system out of equilibrium to

insist that growth serves Singaporeans

and that space always be made for

restakers and that purpose matters as

much as numbers itself. And it leaves us

with a question Singapore and other

successful societies cannot escape from.

When success narrows the path before us,

who will have the courage to carve out

new ones? Thank you for watching and see

you in the next video.

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