WILDGEESE: EMIGRANT BUSINESS LEADERS ON OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD:Mícheál Collins, Co-founder, director, Collins Kumarasinghe Associates
IT IS A long way from Kildorrery in Cork to Singapore, but Mícheál Collins, a partner in the consulting firm Collins Kumarasinghe Associates and chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce there, believes that lessons from the city-state can help Ireland recover.
“Singapore is constantly reinventing itself,” says Collins. “It began by necessity as a low-cost manufacturing outsource economy, as when the British left they found themselves in a situation a bit like Ireland finds itself now – a gigantic increase in unemployment and no industry. So they went out to find contract jobs to bring money into the country.”
Collins, who also sits on the Singapore Business Federation Council, the chamber of commerce that reports to the cabinet, is no stranger to reinvention himself and is clearly fascinated by Singapore’s ability to rebrand and remodel itself.
After taking his MSc in theoretical physics at UCC, Collins spent a few years in the late 1990s working in software in Dublin but he decided to leave at the height of the tech boom for Madrid, keen to find new challenges. As the money ran out, the then 27-year-old returned to consultancy with PwC, which became a unit of IBM. Collins then went on to do his MBA at the top global business school Insead, specialising in entrepreneurship, business development and finance.
With his business partner Nagitha Kumarasinghe, with whom he had worked and studied, he set up Collins Kumarasinghe Associates, a multi-disciplinary professional services firm delivering internet software and digital media consulting through the Kraken Media brand, and education training and preparation through the Prep Zone brand.
Collins began his own digital media product start-up in Singapore but he realised the days of being a one-man start-up show were rapidly drawing to an end when at one point he had just $7.17 in his pocket and still had a $100,000 MBA to pay off.
The challenge was take on work that brought in cash as soon as possible, and the cash started to flow. “Who cares if education consulting is not as glamorous as Silicon Valley?” Collins asks. “It brought in the cash and was a steady, growing business, now a seven-figure business annually in this city. Now we are on the brink of creating a regional business and product.”
He reckons his company’s rise mirrors that of Singapore’s, which took the manufacturing dollar when that’s where the money was. Now it is prioritising the lifestyle, environment and financial services businesses, constantly exporting its accumulated knowledge.
“When Lee Kwan Yew [founder of modern Singapore] went out with his suitcase in the 1960s drumming up business [foreign direct investment] for Singapore, he had no high-and-mighty plans to be the Monaco of the Orient, he just needed salaries paid.
“Singapore doesn’t want to create all the wealth in the world, it wants to trap it by placing its nets where the fish are, today. It will look for money elsewhere later. At the end of the day, who cares about a smart economy when you’ve got a rich economy?”
One example of this recreation is the way Singapore has transformed itself from being a shopping stopover into being a luxury resort destination. It redeveloped an island that was once a prison for communist leaders, Sentosa, into an international lifestyle destination, luring international brands like Café del Mar, creating artificial beaches, adding palm trees.
“They took what they got, added what they needed. In Ireland we can look at what we can repurpose and reutilise and revisit old money earners that stood us well in the past.
“We in Ireland are 100 times bigger than Singapore with a smaller population. The land doesn’t have to be used for housing. At the moment we have a global shortage of food. I come from a farming background so maybe I see that differently, but I feel that food like any product can be redefined from being a commodity to being a premium product if it is created and marketed appropriately.”
Singapore was the world’s fastest-growing major economy last year and while property prices are rising, much of the growth is based on the way it has lured high-end manufacturing, biotech and services. The government owns the land and manages it well, so few are fearful of a property bubble.
Singapore and the wider Asian region in southeast Asia offer huge opportunities for Ireland, Collins reckons, with a relatively advanced market of 500 million people where many speak English and hunger for education and professional services.
Irish graduates or companies keen to break into Singapore need to be prepared to play to their strengths, to build up long-term relationships and to be flexible. And get ready to move fast.
“There’s no time to live in the past in Singapore. ‘Row well and live,’ as the guy said in Ben Hur.”
