School rides of business bigwigs
Around this time every year, parents have to think about the logistics of how their
children would get to school. If the kids are in college and old enough to drive — and fortunate enough to have parents with means — it’s also the time to consider whether they would go to school via public transport or perhaps drive their way there (assuming that parking isn’t too much of a problem).
Parents, of course, want the best for their children and integral to the decision making processes involved here is the fact that the daily commute from home to school, and back, takes up a substantial amount of the child’s waking hours during his formative years.
One could truly say that the experiences that kids have during their trips to school form an important part of their childhood, and hopefully, these will be experiences that will help them live successful lives.
So we asked a few successful Filipinos in the business community
about their daily commutes to school to see whether they share anything in common with us regular folk and, not surprisingly, it seems that they do.
Lance Gokongwei, who heads JG Summit Holdings — a conglomerate with a market capitalization of almost P500 billion, and is into the airline, food and beverage, real estate and retailing business, among others — distinctly remembers his daily travels to school. High school, in particular.
“We were driven to school in a Toyota HiAce with my five sisters sisters,” he said, talking about the ubiquitous van that is one of the pioneer ‘ people mover’ vehicles in the Philippines.
(But when he moved to the US for college, Gokongwei says he didn’t have a car but instead took the bus in Philadelphia.)
Well, that will make the Philippine business partners of Toyota happy.
We asked the Ty brothers, Arthur and Alfred, about the vehicles they’d take to school and it seems that Toyota was already in their DNA long before the family established formal ties with the Japanese automobile conglomerate.
“It would vary from a Toyota Cressida to a Corolla,” said Alfred Ty who is now in charge of the family’s Toyota Motors Philippines portfolio. “We used to have the Cressida here, right? Back then, there was no affiliation with Toyota.”
His older brother, Arthur, remembers it differently: “It was a Toyota Celica, if I remember correctly.”
Arthur Ty, of course, now runs the Metrobank side of the family empire. He says he took public transport while attending high school in Taipei. In university, he used a moped for the first two years, while drove a Honda sedan for the last two.
Nowadays, Toyota offers the Philippine market a wide range of options for getting kids to school. The HiAce is still around, better than ever, but there are also MPVs like the Innova and Avanza, all the way down to the trusty Vios — all perfect for local motoring conditions.
Others who had spartan school commutes during their younger days would also go on to command large business empires.
“When I was going to school, I used to commute, normally taking the jeepney,” said Felix Ang, who owns the local Mercedes-Benz franchise.
He eventually got his first car, which was a used Mitsubishi Lancer, buying it for P25,000.
But even as a kid, he said he always dreamed of driving a Mercedes-Benz. And now he’s the German brand’s national distributor for the Philippines.
Of course, if you have money to burn, you can get a Benz for the kids’ school commutes now. A particular favorite is the V-class van which has all the space to transport multiple children to schools, and then some.
Hyundai Asia Resources Inc. CEO Fe Agudo also had humble beginnings.
“I can still remember the thrill of riding my rich cousins’ 1972 Impala on some weekends when I was 8 years old,” she said. But for school, she used to take public transportation: the humble jeepney.
No such problems today, as she has the entire Hyundai range of vehicles — from sedans to SUVs to the famous Starex van — at her disposal.
(But she retains a soft spot for the jeepney, devoting a lot of resources nowadays toward supporting the government’s Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program through another option: the “Hyundai Modern Jeepney.”
“We hope to give Filipino commuters a safer and more comfortable ride while promising cost-effective, reliable, and low-maintenance operations for cooperatives and operators,” she said.
Another empire builder, Dennis Uy, remembers going to school in Davao using their “family car”: a Mitsubishi pickup.
And the head of the country’s wealthiest family, Teresita Sy-Coson, doesn’t even remember the exact model of the automobile she’s be driven to school in. But she does remember car pooling to school with the other children in her neighborhood.
Clearly, humble beginnings — including spartan childhood experiences — are no stumbling blocks for people driven to succeed. But it does help to get to school and back home safely and, ideally, comfortably.
Thankfully, there’s no shortage of choices available in the local market to help tycoons-in-the-making get a leg up on the competition.