“My mum had just gotten me a computer then and when I came across Yahoo!, it got me interested to find out how someone could build a search engine,” he says. “So I started going to the library near my house to read up on this, and that’s how I became familiar with the technical side of things.” 

“My thought has always been: How can I make money over the internet?” With his enterprising spirit ignited at such a young age, he decided to drop out of school at 16 years old to dive deeper into the world of technology. 

“I remember I was sitting on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, on the way to school,” Tan says. “When I got to my stop, I recall telling myself that I’m never ever going to use any of the things I’m about to learn, at least in the academic sense; I’d rather be learning about technology. So I got off the bus. My mum didn’t find out that I wasn’t at school until two or three months later, but from my perspective, I was using that time to make money.”

By this time, he was already running his first startup, building websites for companies. He later sold this venture to work on his second—a search engine called YoSearch that he'd eventually sell as well, to an Australian company.

He did go back to school, but that was a few years and two sold companies later, to get his computer science degree and an MBA.

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Today, he runs Carro with similar decisiveness. “My work motto is ‘don’t assume’. Often, when things don’t get done, it’s because of miscommunication and people making assumptions,” he says. “But when we’re starting or running a business, we cannot afford to assume.”

“If we’re expanding into another country, we can’t assume that its tax system works the same as in Singapore, or that the people we hire will be like those we hired in Singapore,” he says. “We always need to learn and relearn, and be certain of the matter at hand before acting on it.”

In order to grow the business, Tan is single-mindedly focused on finding areas to use AI to streamline Carro’s processes and free up its manpower to do more productive work. “From time to time, I speak to employees who are several layers away from me and ask what they wish they didn’t have to do at work every day,” he says. “I want to know if we can automate some of these tasks for them. I’m also very edgy whenever I see paper lying around,” he says with a laugh. 

Introducing automation where possible, says Tan, will help Carro reach its goal of becoming Amazon for cars in Asia.

See more honourees from the Technology category of the Gen.T List 2020