Former photojournalist Nicklaus D'Cruz set up a thriving business offering people access to 7,000 golf clubs in 15 countries without needing individual memberships. Now he has set his sights on something loftier: an aviation club for amateur pilots

ENTREPRENEUR Nicklaus D'Cruz once walked out on a million dollars.

At the impetuous age of 26, he quarrelled with a business partner and abandoned his RM1.6 million (worth about $1 million at the time) investment in a Malaysian country club he had helped turn around.

He then 'spent a year being completely broke', scraping by on only RM10 ($4.45) a week.

The situation may have been unthinkable for most.

But it was just par for the course for Mr D'Cruz, now 40 and chief executive of OAAG, a golf company he helped start in 1997. OAAG used to stand for Organisation of Asian Amateur Golfers but the full name has been dropped and only the acronym is now being used.

The home-grown firm offers its more than 10 million members a chance to play at 7,000 golf clubs in 15 countries without needing individual memberships at each club.

From being a loss-making venture when it was launched officially in 1998, OAAG went into the black in 2003 and has doubled its revenue and profit every year since then, although growth last year slowed to between 20 and 30 per cent.

MR D'CRUZ'S PENCHANT FOR THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE extends to his taste for food - he orders lobster spring rolls and wagyu beef steaks for lunch - and his choice of cars - he owns a Porsche Boxster 6 and a Lexus 460. It has been the key to his success as an entrepreneur, as he carves a niche to make the lifestyles of the rich and famous more affordable and accessible. Photo/ MUGILAN RAJASEGERAN

Last year, turnover hit $10 million, making OAAG the world's largest golf club without real estate. Members can tee off at greens as diverse as St Andrews Links in Scotland, known as the home of golf, and Mission Hills Golf Club in China, the world's largest golf facility.

Backed by OAAG's success, Mr D'Cruz turns up for the interview at the Tower Club in Republic Plaza looking every inch the flourishing entrepreneur, flanked by two assistants and a public relations executive.

Dapper in a crisp white shirt and grey Hugo Boss suit, he is the picture of calm and charm.

The rashness may have subsided, but Mr D'Cruz has lost none of the passion or appetite for risk that made him start again from scratch, all those years ago.

Over a three-hour lunch, the father of two boys recounts a history peppered with anecdotes of adventure and stories of survival.

Having left the army in 1988 without a university degree - here Mr D'Cruz shakes his head at the recollection of his failing scores in Malay - he joined The Straits Times and then The New Paper as a photojournalist.

It was the fulfilment of a childhood dream, he says, and a period he still looks back on fondly. 'I remember covering floods, one of the first big stories we had,' he reminisces with unexpected enthusiasm, considering he 'walked down Bukit Timah Road chest-deep in water'.

After a few years in the media industry, he embarked on his ill-fated Malaysian venture.

He ran Club Bukit Rasah in Seremban for just under a year, in which time he added a Chinese restaurant, karaoke rooms and a disco, and raised the club's monthly turnover from RM35,000 to RM250,000.

The value of his investment grew correspondingly and the loss of it hit hard.

'I was fairly young and brash at the time,' he says matter-of-factly of his walking-out incident, with the assurance of one who has learnt his lesson well.

'I literally made my first million when I was 25 and I lost everything when I was 26.'

But Mr D'Cruz rallied quickly and fell back on his three loves - photography, language and golf - to write a series of columns on golf courses around the world.

Life as a roving golf journalist had its fair share of glamour, as tourism boards sponsored his flights, hotels and travel expenses.

Mr D'Cruz clearly came away from the experience with a taste for the finer things in life, as I discover when he orders lobster spring rolls and wagyu beef steak for lunch.

This penchant for luxury also extends to his choice of cars, says the owner of a Porsche Boxster 6 and a Lexus 460.

And it has been the key to his success as an entrepreneur, as he carves a niche in making the lifestyles of the rich and famous more affordable.

'When I wanted to play golf, I couldn't really afford it, so I started OAAG, which was meant to make golf more accessible,' he says.

At OAAG's launch, it had tie-ups with only three golf courses. The firm ran at a loss for years due to insufficient capital.

As his partners backed out one by one, Mr D'Cruz was left with 91 per cent of the business and a $700,000 debt.

'I told myself I wouldn't play golf until we turned ourselves around, and I literally stopped for three years.'

By stepping up OAAG's marketing and introducing corporate memberships, the avid golfer cleared all the debt in one year.

OAAG now employs 80 staff members around the world, none of whom plays golf, says Mr D'Cruz.

'Golfers love to play golf. If I send them out to talk to golf clubs, they end up playing a round of golf, they talk to maybe one club a day. Non-golfers visit five clubs in a day,' he explains with a laugh.

OAAG aims to be in 50 countries in the next five years to become the first global golf company. But Mr D'Cruz has already set his sights higher - all the way to the sky, to be precise.

Having shown that he has the same handicap for business as he does for golf - an impressive nine - he now plans to open an aviation club.

The newly licensed pilot is sinking $15 million into what will be the region's first one-stop aviation club, where members can learn to fly as well as rent, buy and store their own planes.

He has leased 40 hangars in Johor for 15 years and bought eight new autopilot planes, in addition to a second-hand Cessna 170 for himself.

The club will be launched in a few months. Like OAAG, it is to Mr D'Cruz a 'blue ocean' company: one that dominates a niche so completely that there is no chance for the cut-throat competition that would lead to a 'red ocean' of bloodletting.

Mr D'Cruz once thought he would run OAAG forever. But the budding serial entrepreneur also has another essential business trait: pragmatism.

Even as OAAG celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, Mr D'Cruz is preparing for the possibility of selling the company.

'It is ripe for the selling,' he says.

'I am always on the lookout for the next opportunity.'

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