The horror of deaths due to fake goods led GK Ng to a determination to find ways to authenticate products.
What’s your story?
The death of children caused by China’s fake milk powder incident in 2008 had sparked fear of tainted products in the community. The incident is still etched in my mind. Nabcore was inspired by my personal encounter with consuming fake alcohol in China back in 2011. After the incident, I was constantly thinking and looking for an easier way to verify product purchases. When smartphones became more widely available in Southeast Asia, I was looking for opportunities to develop solutions that can combine physical and digital authentication to allow companies and consumers to use their mobile devices to authenticate products.
What excites you most about your industry?
The opportunity to help brand owners in winning the fight against counterfeiters with the use of technology, solution design, and business strategies.
What drives you in your career to push beyond what other people consider normal?
To me, being able to build a business is a privileged opportunity to create something useful that can benefit more people. Since I was given the privilege, I have to do my best to better serve our clients, partners, and associates who have given their trust and time to work with me.
What have been the most useful skills you have learnt and applied in your journey?
The most useful skill that I learnt is to listen and look from other’s perspective. It is common to be eager to put forward our opinion first without truly understanding the views of the other person.
The next skill is in categorising a day’s commitment (be it work or family) into 3 types:
(1) Urgent and Important (eg, Help customers to resolve issues)
(2) Important but not urgent (eg, Plan for next marketing campaign/strategy)
(3) Urgent but not important (eg, Being called upon to review service providers)
and then prioritising my attention and energy to tackle accordingly in descending order.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
If you have tried really hard in doing something and didn’t get the result that you needed, it is likely that thing is not meant for you. Learn how to let go.
Who inspires you?
Mr Lee Kuan Yew (1st Prime Minister in Singapore)
What have you learnt recently that blew you away?
The first principle of why companies can be in business for the long run boils down to only 2 things. Real market demand for what you offer (external factor) and (2) the strength of the offer (internal factor). Other things, such as marketing strategies, operational efficiency, or sales channels, are conduits to support the two fundamentals.
It is important to always question whether our strength is still relevant and demanded by the market. The same thinking also applies to individual skills and capabilities.
If you had your time again, what would you do differently?
If I had my time again, I would not do anything differently. This is because where I am now is dependent on what I had done earlier. Every journey and lesson that I encountered forms part of my experience to go through in life.
How do you unwind?
To unwind, I like to take a walk around in my neighborhood and look at how the day passes for everyone. I also like to listen to pop music in the 90s to recent years.
What is a major mindset change, belief shift or ‘ah ha’ moment that you’ve experienced in relation to your career?
Many companies tend to be protective of their business leads or suppliers and prefer to go solo in trying to capture market shares. My major mindset change was when I realised that collaboration with partners or even competitors is even better and can be a win-win situation.
Through collaboration, we are able to learn from each other and provide the best solution possible for the customers. In the process, it helps to expand the market size (awareness). For our brand protection and security sector, counterfeiters are the ultimate competitors that we should be fighting with.
Everyone in business should read this book:
Zero to One – Peter Thiel
Shameless plug for your business or career:
What separates Nabcore from others is our interlocking and versatile approach towards protecting and tracking products. With a focus in Asia, we understand how counterfeiting hurts companies and consumers in the region. Most solution providers tend to use a single technology or only recommend their own developed products to solve the issues across different industries. However, we believe that no ONE technology will be able to adequately prevent losses due to counterfeiting. With our domain knowledge, we implement integrated physical and digital solutions that empower companies and consumers to authenticate genuine products easily.
How can people connect with you?
Social Media Links?
https://sg.linkedin.com/in/guankai
This interview is part of the CallumConnects series.