Forbes Asia - October 2018

PETER AND MARIA HOEY FOR FORBES

OCTOBER, 2018 FORBES ASIA | 21

serious civil war again,” he says.

Sear has been able to use his valuable

land in Phnom Penh and six provinces to

entice some of his foreign partners into joint

ventures. h e i rst two Oxley Wo rldbridge

projects are rising on high-priced land in

Phnom Penh’s emerging business district,

the To nle Bassac neighborhood. h e Kerry

joint venture is developing a special eco-

nomic zone on Sear’s land along National

Road 2 and is using tax breaks to attract for-

eign investors to develop light manufactur-

ing. h is month he’s opening SME Eco Park,

where Wo rldbridge will of er small and me-

dium-size enterprises space and services to

build their businesses. And his Wo rldbridge

Homes is jumping into the af ordable-hous-

ing market, selling 2,4 57 houses starting at

$2 5 ,000 in a development that’s expected to

be completed in 2020.

Even with his Best Trader status and his

oknha title, the bureaucracy can still sty-

mie Sear. When Cambodian entrepre-

neurs rushed into e-commerce in 2015 ,

Wo rldbridge Commerce launched an on-

line shopping platform, My All In One Mall.

In a partnership with Kerry Express, Sear

pumped $ 17 million into the state-owned

Cambodia Post to improve deliveries, hop-

ing this would help his new business. But

Wo rldBridge has suspended the platform

until the government signs a long-awaited

e-commerce law that would determine how

to tax small orders by individuals.

If Sear is frustrated with the govern-

ment’s sluggish response to e-commerce and

other innovations, he shrugs it of. For fast-

paced advances he’s optimistically looking to

the technology-savvy college students work-

ing for his business-process-outsourcing

company, or his 2 1-year-old son, who runs

an online shop selling his dad’s imports.

(Sear also has a daughter, 1 7, who is study-

ing to work in the tourism and hotel-man-

agement industries.)

Excited by the venture-capital boom in

Southeast Asia, Sear launched his own fund,

Ooctane, in July. He hasn’t decided on a di-

rection for the fund beyond assisting ear-

ly-stage ideas, though he has mentioned a

preference for i ntech investments. But the

money is there: He committed $ 5 million

and won’t seek stakes in the startups until

they prove viable, and he drummed up an

additional $4 5 million from seven other

investors.

Education and technical training in Cam-

bodia may not be at the level of its neighbors’,

but Sear says he’s eager to push any young

person with a big idea. He makes a similar

argument to the entrepreneurs who question

whether an advanced logistics network can

accelerate the development of a small mar-

ket such as Cambodia. “If we lead companies

across Cambodia, from Vietnam to h ailand

and h ailand to Vietnam, what do we get?

Job creation,” he explains. “Cambodia is in

the center of two big countries, so we have to

know how to gain benei ts from them.” F

CAMBODIA

VIET

NAM

THAILAND

MALAYSIA

INDONESIA

Sumatra INDONESIA

Kalimantan

Phnom Penh

Ho Chi

Minh City

Bangkok

Kuala

Lumpur

Singapore

6. The UN moved the
   refugees to the Galang
   Refugee Camp in the Riau
   Islands. He worked as a
   translator for three years
   before getting an ofer of
   transportation back to
   Phnom Penh in 1992 to
   serve as an oicial
   during the UN-
   facilitated elections.
   
   
   1. He left Phnom Penh in 1988,
      one month shy of his high
      school graduation, and joined
      270 other refugees on the
      Sihanoukville coast to set of
      to Australia on an old Chinese
      fishing boat.
      2. Along the coast of Vietnam, the
      refugees clashed with Vietnamese
      pirates but scared them of with
      Khmer Rouge-era weapons
      stashed onboard.
   
   
   
   


7. The refugees aimed to buy food
   and fresh water in Singapore, but the
   Singaporean navy stopped the boat
   and held Sear in handcufs when he
   tried to translate. The navy eventually
   sent the boat on its way with fresh
   supplies, but only after the weapons
   were tossed overboard.


8. Soon afterward the boat
   crashed into a coral reef on the
   Sumatra coast and sank. He and
   other refugees floated in the sea
   before rescue boats arrived;
   some 100 passengers died.


9. The survivors were taken to a fishing
   village on the Kalimantan coast and were left
   there for more than six months. The villagers
   couldn't communicate with the refugees and
   feared that the refugees were planning to
   attack them, so they plotted to kill the
   refugees; finally, the authorities arrived.

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THE REFUGEE VOYAGE OF RITHY SEAR