THE 2011 NUCLEAR CRISIS IN JAPAN brought back memories of a similar disaster for Tay Guan Mong. After graduation, he joined a company which posted him to Sweden in 1986, the year of the deadly Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The explosions released a plume of radioactive fallout that drifted over large parts of the former Soviet Union and Europe where he was. Between 1986 and 2000, some 350,000 people had been evacuated from the most severely contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. “I went through it in Stockholm and lived to tell the tale,” said Guan Mong.

In fact, Guan Mong did more than that. He went on to start a business that specialises in business strategy and implementation. His firm BAllianz has serviced some 100 clients from government and private sectors. Earlier, he was with an American firm that offered the same services.

Guan Mong is one of 15 NTI Electrical and Electronic Engineering pioneers who started their own businesses. Eugene Tan Eng Khian's job with Singapore Technologies Ventures as a technology investment analyst was a springboard towards his entrepreneurial dream. “As an analyst, my role was to use technical knowledge to evaluate investments,” said Eugene, who was involved in investments in Chartered Semiconductor and Creative Technology. His company sent him to the Silicon Valley in the United States for training. The six years at the high-tech nirvana was an eye-opener.

“When I came back to Singapore, the entrepreneur bug bit me time and again,” said Eugene. His first start-up was from Creative Technology during the dot-com boom. It was sold after four years. His second company was from the NUS incubator programme. It was sold within a year. Now, Eugene is managing his third company, XentiQ which offers product design services.

The firm has done hundreds of product design and development projects with MNCs, SMEs and high-tech start-ups. XentiQ's track record for quality and creativity is well known. They have their fair share of accolades through the years. They won the President's Design Award in 2007. They also bagged the prestigious international Red Dot design award in 2006 and twice in 2004.