CHAPTER 2 : MULTIMEDIA CITY

After he worked at CIMB at 1994, he was asked to join at Road Builder, a listed company that his father had just bought into and his father was an executive chairman of the company. So, he didn’t know if he could live up to his expectations and he didn’t want everyone to treat him better then others because he was the chairman’s son. And he wasn’t sure whether leaving CIMB would be the right things to do. He also just got married to his girlfriend.

He was driven by a desire to learn what was happening on the other side of the fence. And he also wanted to know what running a ‘real’ business would be like. So, he asked his brother in law, Shahrir Roose for advice. Then, he said that he should write down his weakness and show to his prospective boss. So, he listed down his biggest weakness that’s:

i- Inexperience and lack of connections ( in the construction industry)
ii- Careless and not meticulous
iii- Lousy handwriting

After that, he showed it to Chua Hock Chin, the executive vice-chairman, and he actually liked his list of weakness and he didn’t his lack of experience. One thing that he learnt from working in the Road Builder is the relationship count a lot. The construction business is an entirely different ball game. He also had to learn to speak different languages with different sets of people.

He was shocked because the working environment at Road Builder was quite a culture. He said that working in a nig company took some time to get used to as well. This is because at the bank, he had 20 colleagues, but in Road Builder, he had 400. When he joined SKALI, they have always emphasized building good relationship with everybody they deal with. The position that he was given at Road Builder was a business development manager.

When 1995, he had a unique opportunity to pitch for a development project at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (now is Universiti Putra Malaysia). Syed Jalaludin, the university’s Vice Chancellor was looking at ways to enhance his 600-acre campus, so he went to see him and discussed the possibility of Road Builder paying a role in the effort. The vice-chancellor naturally balked at he idea. We had heard about the concept of the Multimedia Super Corridor( MSC) from Tengku Azman Shariffadeen of MIMOS. They figured it’d be a good idea to have a cluster of research centers to complement the MSC project and decided to appoint MIMOS as project advisor for Multimedia City at UPM. His association with MIMOS allowed him to get knows Arif Nunn, who recently stepped down as CEO of Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC).

By 1996, they were all set to go with their Multimedia City concept. They had grand plans and even engaged the renowned architect, Kisho Kurukawa, for the project. Syed Jalaludin likex their idea and threw in his support for the project. However , they still needed to get the EPU’s approval. Because it involved university land, it was considered a sensitive project. They didn’t want a blatantly commercial project and instead that any development there had to be something with national interest in mind.

He decided they had to go all the way to the top and wrote to then –Prime Minister Dr.Mahathir Mohamad. He attached a lot of supporting document to make his case.
Strong objection to Multimedia City came from the unlikeliest source, the late Othman Yeop Abdullah, who was MDC chairman at time.

In 1997, would be the year of the Asian economic crisis, so the notion of starting a big project like Multimedia City would have been out of question anyway. He was a bit dejected.