AS a young boy, joining the family business was the furthest thing from Robert Yap's mind.

Despite spending his childhood days helping out with basic book-keeping and truck schedules for the passenger transportation company started by his late father, Dr Yap - chairman and CEO of supply chain management and logistics company YCH Group - did not entertain any thoughts of running the business as he grew older. Fate, however, intervened.

In the year that Dr Yap graduated from university, the company lost its main customer - Public Utilities Board - which accounted for 90 per cent of its business.

"I then had to do what was necessary as the eldest son, and came in to work full-time. Other than my own large family with many siblings, the fate of what we perceived as the large corporate family of 100 drivers (at that time) was also at stake. It was a do-or-die kind of situation," he said.

Two years later, Dr Yap had successfully managed to turn the business around and was considering leaving to pursue his MBA.

"My dad however, asked what it would take to make me stay in the business. Jokingly, I replied, "If you retire and let me do it my way". To my surprise, with just a handshake, he left it all to me and the rest was history," Dr Yap recalled.

Nonetheless, Dr Yap acknowledges that destiny alone is not nearly sufficient to get the job done. "To excel, you have to prove yourself. I knew then I must not fail, as a handshake represents that a promise has been made. I knew I had to keep my word," he added.

In an effort to challenge himself, he started to look into other areas such as warehousing, freight and IT, which later helped shape the business into the integrated end-to-end supply chain management and logistics company that YCH is today.

It is this entrepreneurial spirit that prompted Ernst & Young to award Dr Yap the title of Entrepreneur of the Year (EOY) for Logistics for their EOY Awards Singapore 2007.

As the company grew further, it started to regionalise and advance on a partnership strategy, expanding together with its customers in the countries that they wanted to be in. The next phase, said Dr Yap, will be "beyond supply chain", where we continue to innovate and see the integration of the physical, information and financial flows to build what we envision to be the "Logistics Superhighway".

Turnover for FY2006 was over $164 million and the company is projecting turnover of over $200 million this year. We are targeting figures of $1 billion by 2010, Dr Yap told BT, so we are expecting exponential growth.

It counts companies such as Dell, Motorola and Moet-Hennessy among its customers. While headquartered here, YCH also operates in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, China and India. In order to maintain its competitive edge, YCH is hoping to leverage on its IT solutions as well as strengthen its growing network in Asia and across the Asia-Pacific.

Dr Yap also highlighted the need to keep abreast of regional developments, as he views supply chain management (SCM) as a "connecting piece" to foster global trade. Strategies need to be planned in line with the region's development and should be sensitive to both the economic and political climate.

"YCH is also very aligned to the one-Asean strategy. Positioned strongly as a leading SCM player in the Asean region, YCH will continue to move very strongly and grow aggressively as a leading logistics/SCM player in this region and focus on complementing the capabilities of the upcoming manufacturers in this region," added Dr Yap.

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