Jakarta –
Nippon Paint is the fourth largest paint producer in the world from Japan which has expanded to other countries including Indonesia. Do you know who’s the boss?
It was Goh Cheng Liang, a child born into a poor family. This Singaporean man had to take a severe beating because when he was 12 years old, with only a basic education, his parents sent him to Muar City, Malaysia to sell fishing nets with his brother-in-law.
Three years later, in 1943, Goh Cheng Liang, who was then 15 years old, returned to Singapore. She then started her own business selling carbonated water (water with oxygen content), but stalled.
Not giving up, Goh Cheng Liang becomes an apprentice in a hardware store. He studied everything until he got a promotion to become a salesman.
In a DiscoverSG report, in 1949 Goh Cheng Liang met an Englishman who was auctioning off his paints which were rotten or unfit for use. He saw an opportunity and bought several barrels of paint to experiment with.
Relying on the knowledge he gained from the hardware store where he apprenticed, Goh Cheng Liang mixes various solvents and chemicals to turn the rotten paint he bought into usable paint. Since then, he has founded his own paint company, Pigeon Paint.
The following year, his business skyrocketed due to government policies restricting imported products, including paint, due to the Korean War.
“My wealth was built from these two events. The Korean War and the oil embargo,” Goh said in an interview with the Singapore Business Times in 1997.
Since then the business has continued to grow. In 1959, Nippon Paint Holdings Japan invited Goh Cheng Liang to work together and was appointed as the distributor of Nippon Paint. Until finally Nippon Paint South-East Asia Group (Nipsea Group) expanded its company to become one of the largest paint manufacturers in Asia, namely in the branches of Malaysia, Indonesia, China and the Philippines.
Thanks to his hard work, Goh Cheng Liang is now one of the richest people in Singapore with a wealth of US$12.8 billion or Rp 199.68 trillion equivalent (Rp 15,600 exchange rate). Most of his wealth comes from a majority stake in Nippon Paint Holdings, Forbes reported on Tuesday (11/22/2022).
This achievement does not make him arrogant. Goh Cheng Liang is known as a humble and generous person through a foundation built for humanitarian activities, especially medical aid, the Goh Foundation. In March 2014, the Goh Foundation donated US$50 million or about IDR698.25 billion to the National Cancer Center in Singapore.
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