After graduating with an Honours degree in engineering, I started my career in chemicals trading, where I was mainly exporting to Southeast Asia and importing from Europe or Japan into Singapore. A lot of communications were required with my suppliers and customers to convince them at what quantity and price to sell and buy respectively. As it was a specialty chemical, it was an oligopoly situation where we would analyze competitors’ movement and also conduct demand projection.
I was then privileged enough to have the opportunity to handle grains trading, where I am trading mainly physical corn and feed material while co-working closely with other offices. As commodities are high-volume and price-sensitive in nature, job scope expanded significantly as it would take a lot of decisions affecting profit and loss. Execution is also very different where I would have to look at logistics execution and chartering.
My passion in contributing also pushes me to take up a freelance project as Business Development Manager for a bunker survey company. It was an eye-opening experience that enabled me to have connections with various stakeholders in the bunker industry and also get myself familiarized with the industrial terms used. This also proved to myself that my time management ability enables me to juggle both my full time work and freelance projects well.