Venthill’s Simon Wong Wins Best Entrepreneur Award for Malaysia in the Shipping & Logistics Industry
Mr Simon Wong of Venthill Sdn Bhd recently won the prestigious award of best entrepreneur of 2017 for Malaysia in the shipping and logistics industry. This event was held in Kuala Lumpur for the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards
Mr Simon Wong started working in the shipping industry back in 1998 when he was 20 years old. That was a tough time as a new entrant to the industry as it was during the Asian Financial Crisis.
Since then, Mr Simon Wong found his passion in this industry and decided to venture into setting out his own company, Venthill Sdn Bhd. During June 2002, he started this company with his childhood friend, Mr Ray Tan. Venthill Sdn Bhd started operations by providing ocean freight & air freight services.
It has not been an easy path for Mr Simon Wong to sustain in the market especially with the slow pace of economic recovery from the financial crisis. To overcome the challenging market conditions, hard work is needed to gain the trust of customers to handle their cargoes. During normal working hours Mr Wong usually handles sales by visiting customers and vendors. He gains the trust from the customers by practicing the values he held dear to his beliefs. These values are commitment, integrity, perseverance, transparency and passionate.
Despite the hectic workload and daily schedule, Mr Wong believed in a balanced life style. 2008 was an important turning point for him. His first son was born but the joyfulness was immediately turned to worrisome and heartbreak for him. The new born was diagnosed with breathing problem due to immaturity of his lung. Eventually, with the blessing of the almighty, everything turned out to be fine. It was during this difficult and trying period of his family that he realized that health is more important than anything else. Since then he has been living a very healthy lifestyle with daily exercise for a minimum of one hour. He has also pick up his childhood hobby of playing badminton. Mr Wong could be seen in a badminton court at least 6 days a week playing with his friends. Recently, he took up swimming lessons with his 2 boys developing a keen interest in swimming.
His first partner in business and the co-founder of Venthill Sdn Bhd is Mr Ray Tan. Both have been best friends since childhood and share not only a keen interest in their company but also many hobbies. Both are talented photographers which took them to many outdoor locations together to capture nature and beauty with their cameras. They also share a common interest in music. Mr Wong always reminded everyone around him that he owes his success to Mr Tan not only in business but also personal development.
With all the blessings in life, Mr Simon Wong is a firm believer of giving back to society. He and his company have pledged to some of the charitable organizations with good causes. One Organization that has a special place in his heart is the Spastic Children’s Association of Selangor & Federal Territory.
As year goes by, Venthill expended its activities with the trust from customers and the increase of its customers based. Venthill diversified its business into handling oversize cargo which are unable to load into container boxes. Handling oversize cargoes and heavy-lift cargoes became his strength and a unique skill set.
In 2013, Venthill started to invest in transportation with its own fleet of trucks and trailers which carried the containers and loose cargo covering the whole peninsular of Malaysia. Their main transportation hub is strategically located in Pulau Indah just next to the biggest port terminal in Malaysia. With this strategic location, the company is able to commit to the highest service level with low operation costs to maintain their competitiveness in the market. In 2014, Venthill Sdn Bhd invested into a Korean Shipping Company. The following year, this joint venture company purchased a vessel with Deadweight 9000MT and registered its name as MV Rainbow Symphony; named after one of their subsidiary companies Hallmark Symphony Sdn Bhd.
Today, the company have chartered and managed more than 10 vessels covering Asia Pacific and CIS regions. The company offer a wide range of vessel chartering for different kind of cargoes such as agricultural products, construction materials and natural soils. The company customized its services of chartering vessel to their customers and met the requirements such as voyage chartering, period chartering (time charter), contractual chartering (COA) as well part cargo chartering (combining cargo).
Venthill have successfully undertaken many projects to deliver construction materials for multi-billion mega infrastructure projects such as waste plants, bridges and road building as well as delivering imported factory and assembly lines for mega manufacturing plants. Some key manufacturing plants that the company have provided logistics services to include solar panel production factories, and fiber glass manufacturing production factories. Some of the mega projects that Venthill provides logistics services to include the Sarawak Energy Kanowit High Tension Cable extension plan, TNB Pengerang Site, ultra-hi-tech bridge at Terengganu, Hotels in Penang, Melaka and Kuala Lumpur, and waste plants in Kuantan.
Venthill is a licensed haulage and custom broker with its own licenses issued by the Malaysian authorities. This enables the company to provide in house services throughout the whole spectrum of the logistics function with very competitive costs as all key functions are owned and operated within the company.
Today Mr Simon Wong has clocked a milestone of having run the business for 15 years as the Founder and Group CEO of the Group. Mr Simon Wong places great emphasis on human resource development and ensure all staff are well trained and adhere to the same core values to serve their customers. Under his competent and strong leadership, himself and his partners will steer the group of companies to a great height in years to come.
