From growing up in a wealthy family to losing it all when she was just 15, group CEO and founder of The Parentinc, Roshni Mahtani Cheung, is our guest on this episode of How I Made It.
She tells Andrea Heng how she built her business from scratch.
Here is an excerpt from the conversation:
Andrea Heng, host:
The Asian financial crisis hit your family pretty hard. You were just 15 (years old) … what went through your mind when this happened … when your dad lost his business and income?
Roshni Mahtani Cheung, group CEO and founder of The Parentic:
It was very dramatic for both my brother and myself. I think the shocking thing was we just didn’t know.
So my dad had put on a lot of pretence, and I think it was the typical Asian dad thing which is, ‘I’m not actually going to tell my family what’s going on because I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to save the day.’
But this was beyond him. Because this was the whole economic system that was collapsing.
What was surprising was we were actually really financially affluent before this. It was having that country club membership, living in a nice big landed property, having excesses of cars and (going on) holidays and stuff like that. And then suddenly going (from that) to “Wow, we have nothing”. But it was great because I think it brought me down to reality.
I was living in a different world. So it was really like living in an ivory tower. For example, I did not know that not everybody had air conditioning at home. To me, it was just like, of course, everybody had it.
Andrea:
Because it was normal for you.
Roshni:
It was normal for me, and it was normal for a lot of people around me.
Andrea:
So did your circle of friends also change then?
Roshni:
I learnt a lot about human nature. There were some people who refused to associate with me and my family anymore. They were like: “We cannot mix with you because you guys are bankrupt and it will bring tarnish to our family name. My parents prefer me not to talk to you.”
In fact, my boyfriend at that point in time actually dumped me as well.
Andrea:
How did that experience make you the way you are now, to become the CEO you are today?
Roshni:
So I think that there were a few impacts. So when all of this happened to my family, I had no choice but to make it work somehow. Because my mom had never worked a day in her life before, so she really didn’t know how to hold a job or even what it meant to have a resume. My dad was in depression so he didn’t work for a couple of years.
So this really forced my brother and me to step up, and we started doing part-time jobs, and we started working. So it was the resilience as well as the hard work.
So I would give out flyers at MRT stations … knock on doors and do market research projects and surveys with people. I would do telemarketing which taught me sales. So a lot of these first few jobs actually are now a big part of my business models.
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