THOSE close to Datuk Mohamad Salim Fateh Din, the founder and managing director of Gapurna Group, used to call him the king of petrol stations because of his close relationship with the oil companies. In fact, some attribute Shell's ability to open petrol stations in strategic areas in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor to Salim.
"My association with petrol stations is something I'm proud of. I have nothing to hide. I started in 1985 with one petrol station and learnt how to build them. Those days, nobody wanted to go into the petrol station business.
"That's where I made my money. Is it so difficult for people to accept the fact that I made money from petrol stations?" he asks, feeling aggrieved by views that the group came up because of its political connections.
One of his associates says that in the 1990s, it was a well-known fact that Salim was the person to look for if anyone wanted to set up a petrol station. "He was the guy who could deliver."
The 55-year-old, who is poised to land the top post in Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd (MRCB) if a RM729 million transaction is approved by shareholders, says he mastered the art of building and selling petrol stations before going into large-scale commercial property development.
After dropping out of an ACCA accounting programme, Salim worked as a Malaysian Airline System air steward for six years from 1979. In 1985, he had his first taste of dealing with an oil company.
"I tendered for and won the bid to own and operate an Esso station in Old Klang Road. That was the start of my association with petrol stations. I am still keeping my certificates from the training I went through to win the petrol kiosk job," he says.
Salim discovered that most of the oil companies were looking for strategic locations to expand their presence and quickly learnt what was required to build the stations.
"I started buying and selling properties in a small way. I looked at small parcels in areas where there was heavy traffic. I bought the parcels and developed petrol stations for Esso, Shell, BP and even Petronas. My area was mainly Kuala Lumpur," he says.
From developing petrol stations in the city, Salim went on to develop kiosks along the highways and near fast food restaurants and hypermarkets. "They were all small developments."
Salim says he was one of the pioneers who added convenience stores to petrol stations, something that he observed on his travels overseas as a steward.
"Those days, the petrol stations had only petrol pumps. I started the idea of them selling more than petrol," he says.
Salim got his big break when he bought a piece of land in Jalan Sungai Besi that used to house Vietnamese refugees. "Nobody wanted the land because of the refugee camp. I bought it and developed a petrol kiosk, a fast food restaurant and several shoplots on it. That was in 1991."
But what brought Salim to the forefont of property development was the 348 Sentral building in Brickfields. He acquired from Shell a 2.09-acre plot at the Jalan Tun Sambanthan and Jalan Travers junction and formed a joint venture with MRCB to build a 33-storey office tower valued at RM1.1 billion on it. Some 60% of the building was occupied by Shell on a 15-year tenure.
"It was a purpose-built building for Shell, which made it its regional office," says Salim, who is also the chairman of British American Tobacco (M) Bhd.
This building in Brickfields was also the start of his long association with the EPF, the major shareholder of MRCB. Today, Gapurna Group is poised to become a part of MRCB itself.
This story first appeared in The Edge weekly edition of Feb 18-24, 2013.