34 | FORBES ASIA NOVEMBER 2016
company understands the customer’s needs, is constantly in-
novating and creating products for diferent cultural sensi-
bilities, backgrounds and even the world beyond.”
In Kuala Lumpur, Nirvana billboards are ubiquitous,
making the company a household name. One of its brands,
Baby Paradise, caters to parents who have lost a fetus or a
child. Its “White Ladies” are recognized for their cosmetol-
ogy and makeup expertise and their sensitivity in dealing
with women customers.
Nirvana’s Memorial Park in Semenyih, outside Kuala
Lumpur, has become a tourist attraction. Its memorial
hall draws on ancient Chinese history, architecture and
intricate gold ornamentation to promote a sense of regal
splendor and status. A museum holds the personal efects
of celebrities and political leaders buried there. There’s
also Southeast Asia’s first Chinese stone calligraphy gallery,
constructed at a cost of $5 million. Images of a crystal-em-
bedded Buddha and the Goddess of Mercy are everywhere.
Outside, swaying bamboos, a glistening lake and landscaped
pathways surround tombs covered with horsehead-shaped
roofs. Many of Malaysia’s rich and famous have booked
plots for themselves and their families here.
Kong was certainly not one of these when he was grow-
ing up. The third of 10 children, he was born to a family
of rubber tappers in Kuala Lipis in northern Malaysia.
His mother pedaled him and his brother, neither one a
teenager yet, at 2 a.m. every day to work on the rubber
estates. Then at 7 a.m. the boys would start their long
walk to school, only to return home after school to more
work—bundling and delivering latex—before they went to
bed. “My mama would buy me outsize shoes so they would
last longer,” he says. “The only new clothes I ever wore
were school uniforms.” At 16, out of “sheer desperation,”
the brothers left the village for Kuala Lumpur. There they
distributed toothpaste, soap and other consumer goods.
Demand was brisk, but creditors were always delaying
payments, and margins were razor-thin. Kong moved on in
1985 to launch a moneylending business.
Meanwhile his father-in-law died and he was entrust-
ed with finding a burial ground. But there were no private
cemeteries in Malaysia then. The community cemetery
was strewn with weeds, unkempt pathways and haphaz-
ard tombstones. As he stepped on some of them he found
himself apologizing to the deceased. Then came the
nightmare of dealing with casket makers and organizing a
prayer service. The process was so chaotic that “demand
for a better service was self-evident,” says Kong. “Death
is a certainty. Whoever is born must die. That means a
demand in perpetuity.”
Selling the concept, however, was diicult. Kong
might have abandoned it, but a recession hit Malaysia in
1987, and as liquidity evaporated his credit business went
belly-up. He was at square one again, this time with a
young wife and two children in tow. Plagued by doubts
about profiting from such a delicate business, he was
fortunate to have a friend who was a monk to get him
past the psychological barrier. And a geomancy master
helped him identify land in the shape of a dragonhead
with good feng shui. He won over a reluctant landlord
with a profit-sharing proposal and gained the right to use
a 50-acre parcel for burials. But the local government re-
jected his application. For the next two years Kong would
troop down to the land department nearly every day. In
1990 he finally won approval and called his new company
Nirvana.
His first customer was a friend who bought a plot after
his uncle died. Soon word spread about the new “death
company.” Before the year was out, Nirvana was turn-
ing a profit. But not believing that the land had any resale
value, banks still wouldn’t lend Kong money. So he kept an
eagle’s eye on cash collections and landholding costs. Any
surplus went into accumulating more land and beautifying
the cemetery. Skeptics began turning around as he rolled
out one innovation after another and profits soared. “For
the first time lenders, investors and bankers began to look
at my business as legitimate, though unusual,” he says.
But he hadn’t quite arrived yet. In 1996 Malaysia’s
stock market was on a tear. Nirvana applied for a listing,
but it didn’t have any peers or valuation model to judge
its viability. “No one knew how to deal with it,” he says.
The application was rejected, but once Kong was finally
able to launch his IPO in 2000, the way was paved for
very quick growth. “I would work 16 hours a day, super-
vise every detail for every service personally till it was
perfect,” he says.
Kong relisted Nirvana in Hong Kong in 2014, fetching
$246 million and giving him the muscle to expand into
Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines and China.
The private equity deal will speed that expansion. “When
I started out, I simply had a dream to provide seamless,
worry-free death services,” he says. “It has made me more
money than I ever dreamt, and it has also ensured that I
will have a happy ending when the time comes.”
Indeed, his burial plot stands right on top of the hill at
his Memorial Park in Semenyih.FORBES ASIA
NIRVANA ASIA
“I SIMPLY HAD A DREAM TO
PROVIDE SEAMLESS, WORRY-
FREE DEATH SERVICES. IT HAS
MADE ME MORE MONEY THAN
I EVER DREAMT.”
F