There is old wealth and there is new wealth. In many stories on old wealth creators, the road to success did not come easy. The many rags-to-riches stories testify to this. On the other hand, the owners of new money, that is, money created in the current generation, may have had an easier path to riches. 

Indeed, technology and innovation are game-changers. We have heard of how some young people became millionaires in a short span of time.

Yet, whether old or new, making money is only half the battle; hanging on to that money or growing it is the real challenge. Often times, owners of old and new money do not hold the same views on how to grow, protect and invest their wealth. 

Here we feature a descendant of an old family, Datin Paduka Tan Siok Choo, who talks about how her great-great-grandfather practised tough love and effectively disinherited his children and grandchildren, leaving his great fortune tied up in a trust for more than 80 years, to ensure that his children earned their own way.

We also feature new money. Sreenivas Saba, the son of Singapore’s “Papadom King”, was determined to make his own way in life and learnt how to trade on the stock market while he was still in university. And then there is Datuk Chevy Beh, son and heir of BP Healthcare Group chairman Datuk Beh Chun Chuan, who decided to make the most of the opportunities and privileges granted to him by his father’s largesse rather than relaxing into the entitled life of a professional layabout.

Striking out on his own

Sreenivas Saba may be the son of a well-to-do man, but he considers himself self-made. His parents had sent him to good schools — Winchester College in the UK, followed by the London School of Economics (LSE) — but he learnt to stand on his own two feet even before he graduated.

He started investing in the stock market when he was just 18. One semester at the LSE, a lecturer ran a stock trading game in which he gave his students £100,000 in virtual money and asked them to invest it. 

“Like most things, as soon as I started, I completely failed. Later on, I got the hang of it. I think that in many pursuits, I go in with too much enthusiasm and make the wrong decisions. But once the enthusiasm dies down and the thinking kicks in, I start doing things right,” says Sreenivas.

By the end of the term, he was the third best student in that class. Pretty soon, he was investing in the stock market for real. 

“One of my friends started doing so and he got me into it. I borrowed £500 from my dad to start and everytime my mum or somebody came to London to visit me, or gave me money to buy clothes or shoes or whatever, I would invest it,” says Sreenivas.

In 2008, he watched as the financial markets tanked and share prices fell. “In my youthful ignorance, I felt that when something was going down, that was the time to buy. But if something is going down, there is a reason for it and you need to step away until you understand what is happening.”

He also started educating himself on the stock market. “I like this investor, Jim Rogers, and had the habit of reading his books. He wrote A Bull in China, about how China was going to be the next big thing. Although I had a lot of friends over there, I did not know any of the companies. Then, I saw the name of an Indian company — India Hospitality Corp — mentioned in the book. I had done my internship with the company in Bombay that summer so I knew the property, the assets and what it stood for.”

Sreenivas put about £1,500 in the stock, investing a little at a time, picking up most of the shares at 15 US cents apiece. In 2009, when the bank bailouts happened, the shares reached 60 US cents each. He was ecstatic, thinking he had a knack for this. 

“Nothing could have been further from the truth because after that, the stock kept falling until it hit eight US cents. Of course, my exuberance was curbed. But I knew the assets — I had seen its outlets. At eight US cents, the market capitalisation was £1.5 million to £2 million. I knew this was wrong and that someday, things would improve,” he says.

Sreenivas kept buying the shares. “I bought 27,000 shares in the company, but it was eventually delisted. Last year, I read that the company had been acquired following a spate of mergers and acquisitions, and the shares I bought at 8, 10 and 12 US cents were acquired for US$2.50,” he says.

“I had put in £3,000 to £4,000 and my returns worked out to about RM300,000! And part of that went into this company — Bhavani Foods (M) Sdn Bhd, the proprietor of Taj Mahal Pappad. So in that way, I feel that I am self-made because it was my money, and not my father’s, mother’s or grandfather’s money.”

Not all of his investments turned out so well. “I used to read about Li Ka-shing and in 2011, he listed Hutchinson Port Trust in Singapore. So, I thought I would invest in that because it is a Li Ka-shing company, and that was the extent of my due diligence, which was clearly wrong. I invested and the stock did not go anywhere. I eventually sold out of it,” says Sreenivas. 

“Sometimes, you make a decision and you justify it to yourself. This is something I have been guilty of, but at least I have learnt to understand the gaps in my thinking. And when I am wrong, as proven by the market, I get out as soon as possible, which is something I did not do in the past. 

“I have a stop-loss order, which means that if a stock goes down by 1% or 2%, I automatically sell. A lot of people buy more when the price goes down because in their minds, if the stock is worth US$10 but it has gone down to US$4, it is still worth US$10.

“I do not think this is the case. If it goes from US$5 to US$4.95, get out. Cut your losses and wait for it to come back to US$5 or more, and then you buy. This is something which I feel has been an evolution in my thinking.”

Until the age of 15, Sreenivas lived in India with his mother, MGR Latha, a famous Tamil movie actress, especially in the 1970s. When he was 15, he was shipped off to the UK to do his A-levels at Winchester College and then on to the LSE. He feels that Winchester shaped him more than university, especially its motto, “Manners Makyth Man”, which some people may recognise from the 2015 movie Kingsman: The Secret Service. 

His father is Singaporean. “He was very much an entrepreneur. My grandfather started the business and my dad took it on and grew it extensively in Singapore and Malaysia. He used to be a commodities trader in Africa as well, based out of Singapore. And then after a few years, he focused on the food business and we have done that since,” says Sreenivas.

He grew up surrounded by entrepreneurial and artistic activity. “My mother got into acting when she was just 15 and has done more than 200 movies. She has received Filmfare awards, among other things. So, I was exposed to two different points of view growing up,” he says.

When Sreenivas graduated, he went back to India and worked for a start-up rather than a bank. “I was always clear in my mind that I wanted to do something on my own, and I felt that working for a well-funded mega start-up where the boss was very clear on what he wanted to do was much better than being a cog in a very big machine. So, I did that for the first two years and then I started my own e-commerce project in India — ecourierz. It is like Expedia for logistics. It helps you pick the best solution for delivery,” he says.

In the beginning, he had a good idea but not the funds to make it happen. “I couldn’t ask my parents for money so I had to be very careful with how I spent what little money I had,” says Sreenivas.

One example of this was the name of the website. ecouriers.com would have cost him US$80,000 so he came up with ecourierz.com, which only cost US$10. And he was not able to afford employees, so he hired 10 interns from a university in Chennai. 

“The first part was launched for less than INR50,000, which is RM3,000. This year, we will cross RM1 million in sales,” he says.

Basically, Sreenivas had to hustle. “I am not saying I accomplished anything great. My point is that nothing was handed to me on a silver platter so it really forced me to go out and confront things, and not see them through rose-tinted glasses. If life was only about flying business class and staying at five-star hotels, you would have no real incentive to get better,” he points out.

The youngest of six siblings, Sreenivas was not invited to join his father’s business. He pushed his way in. “In 2014, my dad had a terrible accident during a religious firewalking ceremony. He fell down and 40% of his body was burnt. He spent three months in hospital in Singapore and six months resting at home,” he says.

Sreenivas had been doing research on a line of papadom chips (just like Lay’s potato chips) even before the accident. “I felt I had to do something. I couldn’t sit on the sidelines and do nothing. That was when I pushed my way into the business because I knew what had to be done. We had been discussing this idea with dad since my schooling days because Walkers [the Lay’s of the UK] had come up with papadom chips. The only thing was to act on it,” he says.

Again there was a liquidity crunch. “We had to hustle more, try to get loans. We had a good product and we had bankers who were interested. It was just a cash-flow problem because of the credit terms of 45 or 60 days or whatever it was. I sold some of my stocks and put my money into the company that December. I guess when the solutions are not so simple, you just try harder,” says Sreenivas.

He is 28 but he does not think he is like most of his peers. “My generation is very spoilt and everybody seems to want everything instantaneously, which is not how the world works,” he says.

He also has a problem with the oversharing on social media. “To be a free spirit is not just tweeting what you feel. You can be a free spirit in many other ways as well,” he points out.

Sreenivas uses social media differently. “Twitter is for understanding information. Facebook is a really well-connected search engine. I would say 30% to 40% of my customers I have met on Facebook. If you were to email these companies or call them, nobody would answer. But if you send them something on Facebook, the guy in charge of social media will easily put you in touch with somebody who could speed up the decision. And Instagram is for my personal life,” he says.

“I have never been too social on social media. It is more for consumption than a display of information.”

Although he has a lot of criticism about the way technology is used and abused, he thinks young people who are connected and in the know can turn their knowledge into an advantage when it comes to seeing how certain things will move stocks. While not a fan of Pokémon Go, he has observed the way it has moved the stock of Nintendo until it is trading higher than Sony. 

Or how, after South Korean singer Psy (Park Jae-Sang) became an instant hit with Gangnam Style, the stock of his father’s company, DI Corp, went up six to seven times in the course of six months. Both are phenomena that a savvy young investor could have picked up on.

Sreenivas divides his investments into two categories — speculative and non-speculative. “My e-commerce start-up, Uncle Saba, my investments in the stock market, these are speculative because even with our own companies, although you can influence the outcome, you don’t quite know what is going to happen because you don’t have money in your pocket from selling the company or going for an initial public offering,” he says.

“A non-speculative investment would be buying land and putting up a commercial building so we can get rental income. It is something I am doing in India right now. The non-speculative investments give me my lifestyle and the speculative investments can someday give me wealth. And if they don’t work out, at least my lifestyle is taken care of. This is better than risking the whole farm on speculative investments.”

Sreenivas sees wealth as a gateway to freedom. “I aspire to live my life the way I want to live it; to have freedom in the sense that I do what I want to do when I want to do it, and these actions are not dictated by external circumstances such as a lack of money, or time, or resources, or knowledge.

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