THIS YEAR is shaping up to be a glorious one for Derek Goh, chairman and CEO of Serial System.
Among other things, he received The Public Service Star (BBM) award during the Singapore National Day awards for his community service.
His Singapore-listed shares are up 158% since the start of the year (from 6 cents to 15.5 cents) and they are headed for a TDR listing in Taiwan at presumably higher valuation.
And, best of all, last night Derek was presented the Asia Pacific Entrepreneur of the Year award at a gala dinner at Shangri-La Hotel.
The award came from Enterprise Asia, a non-government organization in pursuit of entrepreneurship and was founded by entrepreneurs.
Derek founded Serial System as a sole proprietorship in 1988 and listed the company on the Singapore Exchange in 1997. It now has a market cap of S$118 million.
Photo: Leong Chan Teik
The Special Achievement of the Year award went to Henn Tan, chairman and CEO of Trek 2000 International, which has launched innovative products – the FluCard and i-Ball – this year.
The FluCard is touted to be a global consumer product in the years ahead as a consortium of leading digital camera makers led by Toshiba incorporate it into millions of cameras from next year.
The i-Ball is a tiny video camera that transmit images wirelessly to devices such as cameras and the i-Pad.
Shares of Trek, which gave the world the Thumb Drive a decade ago, are up 138% so far this year, from 18.5 cents to 44 cents.
Other winners last night included Doreen Liu, co-founder, World Scientific Publishing (Women Entrepreneur of the Year), and Sean Lee, CEO, Marco Polo Marine (Young Entrepreneur of the Year).
Recent stories:
SERIAL SYSTEM: Heading for Taiwan listing for better valuation
TREK 2000: NextInsight readers get 3 hours' worth of insights