haslinda: hello, and welcome to "high flyers," the show that gives you a 360 degree view of asia's business elite. today we meet the mastermind behind the second-most popular word processor, trailing only microsoft. in 2015, he was ranked asia's wealthiest entrepreneur under 40 and he is highly ambitious. he has a string of projects in the pipeline. let's meet arun pudur. it all came from fixing scooters.

in a small garage. that's where he learned sales, marketing, customer service, and most importantly how to solve , problems. that experience helped him succeed in tech and motivated him to expand into other sectors, including retail, mining, and real estate. his motive is never take a backseat in anything you are involved in. and now it's time for this highflyer to join us on the singapore flyer and tell us about his remaining goals. arun pudur, welcome to "high flyers."

arun: thank you for having me here. haslinda: you made your first billion at 26. it all started when you were 13 with borrowed money of $150. tell us the story. arun: let me make a correction. it was an investment. the best bank that you have is your parents. my friends were busy asking for a bicycle or whatever. i asked $150 at the time that was big money. that was almost two months salary for some people. i didn't want to start a business on my own. i felt i wanted to get into this business. he was earning $5,000-$6,000. i said why not me do the same thing. haslinda: you are fixing honda

scooters in the garage. arun: just left us without any notice. there was an option to close it down or to do what you're supposed to do. i decided why not. i used to observe him doing it. within a matter of five or six months, i would go to school and open up by appointment. in six months, we turned around the company. we were making close to $300 a month. haslinda: when you sold, you sold it for $200,000. it all went to mom. arun: she still owns 5% of my tech company. it was a fantastic deal. we started franchising. we started getting long-term contracts with people. that is where i learned everything. i did not go to an ivy league college because my parents

wanted us to go to the school or that school. we had the capability to do that, but i learned a very important tool. if i can convince somebody to give me a dollar, i can get a billion dollars. the facts are boiled down to human interaction. that's where i learned my sales and marketing and my customer handling and my upselling. everything was done practically in the street down there. we knew how to get and attract people. when people used to ride, this

should be a massive garage. haslinda: you raised champion dogs. what do you learn from that experience? arun: the dog breeding was a fantastic experience. it was so experienced to go to a veterinary doctor. i used to say overnight. as a teenager, i used to have a room. when my friends were busy, i was busy making money. haslinda: that led to cellframe. arun: i worked under somebody. when i joined the company, india was making less than 2000 u.s. dollars a month. he agreed to pay me about $500 in salary. i was just out of college.

he wanted me to work for him. he did not have the money to pay me. when i left the company, i started franchising for him. i wanted to do something big. when i left him, he had about 70 franchisees. he was supposed to pay me for it, which he did not do. i understood the value of the contract as well. if i can do that for him, why don't i do it for myself. and that is how subtle frame was born -- and that is how cellf rame was born. haslinda: you thought really big. you were going to compete with the big boys, we are talking about microsoft. you did not think of microsoft as a competitor. arun: you can't compete. the problem is i used to imagine there was only one type of car. if you have no choice, it's a dictatorship. that's how microsoft operates.

if i had a choice for people, that's an opportunity for us to work in. my target market was people who couldn't afford paying three months of your salary to get this software. they don't want to buy illegal i wanted to create a product that was affordable. they could use it at a pc that's 10 years old. haslinda: the first 6-9 months were very difficult. you were on the verge of going broke. what saved you? arun: we were trying to go the typical fashion. we were trying to get large

orders. it didn't happen. people think software is a very comfortable business. software is one of the dirtiest. there are charts to do not allow orders to come in. businessmen, i said what should i do next? you go to the biggest holy. that was the hard moment for me. i said let a go to the government worried we offered an offer they couldn't refuse. what we told them was whatever your paying right now, we will give you the software and handle the migration. we will give you free training. even if they give me $.50 to implement a product. we started off with one ministry. we wrote 100 licenses. in 24 hours, they said -- we are going to go nationwide. every ministry is going to use

this product. we went to 70000 and then millions and millions of softwares were being sold. we had the biggest customers, the government. and then the education sector. these are massive sectors. minimum requirement for exposure. that's why we grew. haslinda: cellframe has yet to become a household name like microsoft did is that by design? arun: exactly. our focus was more towards -- i believe the dollars should go to r&d to make your product better. when you invest on people and r&d, you keep developing a product people love. word-of-mouth is one way for you to survive. that's what we were on. every year, if you have a bad

product and not giving what promised to deliver, they are not going to use the product. unless it's free. today, we live in a free economy. even if i give you an app for free, it lags your phone. we put so much into r&d and decided to offer a 40% offer. i did not have to do the selling at all. they sold the product like crazy. localizing the product was very important. how you sell a product to an indian is different than selling in china. it's the same thing in malaysia or south africa or zimbabwe. we are in 72 countries now. we have retail selling products. the product is sold and people can connect with it emotionally. people are buying you, not your product. if they love you, they will buy

anything from you. that's how business works. haslinda: sold. up next, -- arun: i always say to my people, just imagine it. ♪

haslinda: cellframe has been so successful. but you did not want to stop there. you diversified into agriculture, commodities and

real estate. what's the thinking behind that? arun: i have a fantastic network of partners. they are the ones that tilt me -- that built me into who i am today. he comes from a mining background. he calls me up and says where -- why are you not you looking at mining? we put the money back in. we just keep in the bank, that doesn't make any sense. in 2008, the world was running away from the market. we thought that things were available at such a good price. basically, they were giving it away for free. we started to enter into this business. i rely on my partners substantially. that was a perfect time to start diversifying. i always wanted to do that. i am in the business of making money. haslinda: is it about hiring the smartest people in the industry? arun: absolutely.

now we have professional networks and people are interconnected. technology has changed way people interact with each other. you can find a guy with 25 years experience that can deliver what you want. last week we wanted a guy with experience working in uganda. it was a very specific thing. it took my people less than 15 minutes to find an expert in the region. you have to rely on people to grow. we have just 100 people working for me directly. indirectly, we have 14,000 people working for the corporation. we grew through the network. what i have learned today is nothing learned in school.

that i use now while doing business. haslinda: you started off as a technology company. but increasingly, you will be , occupying more of the business. arun: pretty much. we are looking at building of the non-technology sector. even during a downturn, it's a requirement for health care. that will always be there. the requirement for oil and gas will always be. prices can fluctuate. demand will always grow. i have never seen a situation where demand collapses. as the population grows, people want more stuff. when you want more stuff, you have to have other industries as well. haslinda: that's interesting to 40% of your employees and that being entrepreneurs themselves. what kind of culture is within the company? arun: at cellframe, i've told

this before, i always tell my people why do you want to work with me? that is the first question i asked in an interview. you can do the same thing. if you're comfortable delivering me the product, by doing it on your own terms i am comfortable with that. human resource, even of the population is growing, getting the right people for the job is a big challenge. given an option, everyone wants to be their own boss. we can see globally, people freelancing. everybody wants to be a freelancer. i give the option to my employees to work from home.

85%-90% of my employees will take the option of working from home. then we offer them options. are you comfortable to set up your own team and run it on your own? we will give you a three-year contract. to make sure that you deal with the product in the same fashion. these people have been working with me for five years. i know how they deliver polity. it makes things very easy for us. haslinda: just about anyone can become an entrepreneur. what is hindering people? is it fear? arun: there is one of the factors. the education states that you are better off doing a nine to five job. and getting a guaranteed paycheck. i am one of the 1% of the 1%. -- youbillion people and have 7 billion people and you have about 2000 billionaires. it's such a small club because we like to take risks. it's not like they're going to blow all their money. if you can imagine it, it can be

done. just imagine it. put the effort that is required in to get it done. the biggest challenge that people faces is the fear. what if i'm not successful? if it doesn't work, you can always come back and work for me. it's not a problem. haslinda: next on "high flyers" -- arun: you still visit the toilet. ♪

haslinda: the wealthiest man in asia under 40, when you first got your money, you had nine private jets, supercars. yacht, homes. there was a time when you used to go to the armani boutique. and came out with 20 suits, some of which you did not like. what kind of lifestyle was that? [laughter] arun: it was fun. when you reach the top of the pyramid, if i make $100,000. human beings like to keep moving forward. i was that kid who have a lot of cash and i didn't know what to do with it. naturally, you want to get that shiny thing you can find. what can i say?

what happens is is you become involved in the process. this can go an extra 40 not ago -- nautical to cold miles faster. haslinda: you always wanted to be a pilot. arun: that was my initial dream when i was very young. my mother said that's never going to happen. we got an opportunity to travel. we travel all over the world six times already. i want to do it in style. when you reach a time and you start selling all the stuff you bought, you're getting a dime for the dollar. this is not the way for us to move forward. once you are a billionaire, you need to have this and that.

you see several billionaires losing their fortune very fast. i was lucky enough to learn the lesson very fast in my life. i cut my losses and move forward. i need to focus on my business and my people and my stakeholders and not just frivolously throwing away money just because i have the money. i started to become smarter. haslinda: you set up a foundation. 10% of what you make goes to the foundation. arun: we focus on education and equal rights. and environment. we are very passionate about that. let us allocate a certain amount of money. we started off with $400 million and this year we are trying to take it up to $1 billion. this is all our own money, which we feel we need to invest. every project that we take, we get involved personally. i have people who are passionate

about it and volunteered to work for us. there are a few people who have experience. in this foundation. this is a social enterprise. we wanted to run like a all-time -- we wanted to run it like a multinational business. we want maximum bang for the buck. haslinda: you are in the moviemaking business. you are not. not yet. arun: in time. i was involved in the movie business when i was young. haslinda: how was it like growing up with your father a cinematographer? arun: you have glamour as part of your business. you have heroes wearing the cape in your home. i got an idea. in india, people fault your -- fall at your feet.

that is a sign of respect. you see these huge stars falling at my father's feet and he is such a big star. i always say this thing, you still eat three times a day and you still visit the toilet. when you think in that fashion, nobody is any different at all. it's part of my plan. in the next couple of years, we are looking at the issue of the entertainment business and africa. we think there is so much culture and language and so much diversity over here that can be exploited and we have worked on a couple of projects on an independent aces. -- independent basis. we are going to set up something substantially large. cellframe has not deem urgent. we have four companies focusing on cyber security and robotics

and enterprise solutions. each of these companies are multibillion-dollar companies. there are a couple of people who have those $2 billion companies. have those companies. i may be the one guy who's got four companies that are a billion dollars each. if you want to list the company's, i am handing over my babies to each one of them. we are moving forward. from being a founder run company. the final act of this will be when i have a large base. i think we are ready. to get listed. haslinda: you have done just about everything you want to do. what's next? i think there is a book coming. arun: that is something my

family has wanted me to do. i feel like sharing like experience, i have a good social media following. i do share what i have the time. i am trying to put together a book which will be a very simple guide for people to do what i have done, to replicate what i have done. very rarely will you see billionaires saying how they did what they did. it's a very simple way of doing business. it's just you need to imagine. once you imagine and commit yourself to that and have a focus on that, anything is possible. if i can do it, anybody can do it. what does being indian means to you? we are a nation, one of the

ancient races in the world that survived. we are the most peaceful race that still exist. 16,000 years, they never it meted anybody. -- they never admitted anybody. we have never invaded anybody. we don't necessarily come with a is this dna. we want to do this. i have never gone to any country where an indian wasn't successful. in silicon valley as well. you look at the top five companies, you will see they are run by indian ceos. you can leave india, but it always remains inside you. no matter how far away you are, it's the same values that we grew up with and it never changes. haslinda: thank you so much for being on "high flyers." ♪