Patrick Grove, the S$600 million serial entrepreneur

SINGAPORE — Forbes and BRW Rich lister Patrick Y-Kin Grove, 41, has been an entrepreneur for most part of his working life, long before calling oneself an entrepreneur became fashionable. His net worth now exceeds S$600 million, but the road to riches has been anything but rosy for the serial entrepreneur, who had to endure years of losses and not having a pay cheque as his business struggled.

Born in Singapore to an Australian father and Singaporean mother, Mr Grove calls Singapore his primary home, having spent most of his growing-up years in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Upon graduation from the University of Sydney, Mr Grove went to work for a management consultancy for more than two years, before leaving to start his own business, something he had always wanted to do.

“My mom was never encouraging me to be an entrepreneur. She wanted me to be a doctor, lawyer or banker but none of those things interest me… All I wanted was to be an entrepreneur,” the self-made multi-millionaire said in an interview with TODAY.

In 1999, he invested the bulk of savings of about S$100,000 to start Catcha.com, an Internet search engine for South-east Asia, which gained traction to become a leading portal in the region. But just as Catcha.com was preparing for its initial public offering in Singapore to raise over S$50 million, the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and Nasdaq crashed, forcing it to abort its listing plans. Despite the setback, Mr Grove never once thought that the path was not the right one for him.

“The initial business lost about S$20 million over eight years. We had to cut costs, grow revenues and used creativity to keep the business alive. When I look at my entrepreneurial journey, we lost money for eight years. You can’t pay yourself a bonus or salary. It was embarrassing to tell people what you do. But we kept going,” he said.

Mr Grove and his team had to constantly seek funding from investors to keep the company running and diversified into magazine publishing to build the business. In 2006, the 31-year-old Mr Grove set up iProperty Group through Catcha, and the real estate portal made its debut on the Australian stock exchange in the following year.

The IPO catapulted Mr Grove to further success and he is now the owner of a string of sizable businesses, some of them listed on stock markets across the region. Last year, media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group announced it will buy up the rest of Malaysia-based iProperty – in which it already had a stake - for A$578 million (S$576 million), making it one of the biggest Internet exits in Southeast Asia.

Mr Grove is not standing still. His new goal: Making his star business, the Kuala Lumpur-based Internet TV service provider iflix, the first Internet company in Southeast Asia to launch a multi-billion IPO in the United States.

“iflix will be a multi-billion company in the next two years. We want iflix to be the first ASEAN Internet company that goes for a multi-billion IPO in America... My goal is to create an Internet company from Southeast Asia that can be global. I want to prove that Southeast Asians have the ability, intellect, and perseverance to build a great global Internet company,” he said.

On Singapore’s entrepreneurship landscape, Mr Grove said it has come a long way since the time he started out.

“Singapore’s start-up scene is fascinating. In the last three years, it has grown so fast. There are now so many start-ups, start-up events, and so many start-up investors. Someone like me from the older generation looks at it, and think that it is so refreshing. If you have an idea, there is so much support. When we started in 1999, there were no venture capitalists. Being an entrepreneur back then was not cool. Perceptions have changed a lot,” he said.

While the Singapore market is too small, it can be a springboard to the region, Mr Grove said.

“Singapore has a great role that it can potentially be the centre of gravity of this great digital and entrepreneurial push in the region. Singapore has at its doorstep 700 million people. If you want to build a great big Internet company, you cannot focus on Singapore. You have to focus on the 700 million people in Southeast Asia and Singapore is a great hub for that,” he said. He added he plans to set up an office in Singapore housing iflix and Catcha’s operations by the end of the year.

Mr Grove offered some advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

“Being an entrepreneur is a very serious business. But it is okay to have unrealistic expectations. All the great entrepreneurs believed it was possible to do things no one else thought possible,” he said.

“My advice for entrepreneurs is to JUST DO IT. Always have a mindset that whatever it takes to get there, get it done. No excuses… You just have to put the fears aside and just do it. Everyone has an idea, but very few of them do something about it. Just take action and do not worry about what other people think. If you are really passionate about doing something, just do it. Stop thinking and just do it.”