He quit school at 18, now his drain-cleaning firm makes $2M and ranks among Singapore’s fastest-growing

As a teenager, Shaik failed his mathematics and combined science subjects in 2005. After retaking them a year later, he enrolled at Millennia Institute in 2007, according to The Straits Times.

But following his first year-end examinations, he decided to quit. His father, then a general manager at a waste management company, reacted angrily.

To impress upon his son the value of education, he told Shaik to earn his own living.

At 17, Shaik went for an interview at his father’s office in Ubi. His dad said: “You have no education and no experience. You should be thankful I’m employing you,’” recalls Shaik, now 36.

He was paid SGD23 a day as a technician, with the option of earning more through overtime.

“My friends were going to school and playing games. I was cleaning grease traps. It smelled so bad. I thought: ‘What am I doing with my life?”

“Then I told myself: I already have one leg in. Make it or break it. That’s when I decided to give everything to it.”

He clocked long hours to increase his earnings, sometimes sleeping beside grease traps when there was a three-hour gap between jobs late at night.

He later joined the high-pressure water jet team to acquire more technical skills. Being able to read and write English distinguished him from older workers, allowing him to communicate effectively with clients – an advantage his boss valued.

By late 2008, when he left the company to serve national service, he was earning more than SGD3,000 a month as a senior technical specialist.

After completing his national service in 2010, he spent a year as an operations executive at a specialist cleaning firm. His work mainly involved using high-pressure jets to remove barnacles from vessels and equipment on Jurong Island.

14 months later, he decided to heed his father’s advice and embarked on a global diploma in marketing and marketing management at a private educational institution here. But he gave it up when he failed an important module.

He was unsure of his next steps at age 22, but his father, who by then was working in another waste management firm, referred him to his company. It needed a manager to oversee operations, planning and sales for its 60-member team.

He started in 2011 earning SGD1,900 a month, but gained important experience, including negotiating a deal with a foodcourt operator to manage all 20 outlets instead of just one.

Within two years, the then 24-year-old more than doubled his salary and was given a company car, a red Mercedes-Benz C180, he says.

Shaik’s interest in entrepreneurship took root during his secondary school years. He remembers classmates arriving in chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benzes and Bentleys, only to learn that their businessman fathers were unable to read or write English.

By contrast, his highly educated teachers drove more modest vehicles.

“I told myself: ‘The only way I’m going to make money is by doing business,’” says the former school sprinter, debater and National Police Cadet Corps member.

Keen to start his own business, Shaik approached Kelvin Neo, an acquaintance in his 50s who worked in the same building.

Neo, who runs landscape firm Ho Eng Huat Construction, had previously asked if Shaik was prepared to be his own boss. Although Neo did not speak English and Shaik spoke little Hokkien, the two shared good rapport.

Neo gave Shaik a SGD200, 000 in investment in his waste management firm Jetters Incz. He also linked him up with a corporate secretarial service to help set up the business, and never asked for the money to be repaid.

Running a business proved more challenging than expected, as he managed cash-flow pressures while raising two young children with his wife, Dania Nur Kay’la Mohd Taib, 36, who assisted with sales.

She is now Jetters’ chief commercial officer. The couple have three children aged eight to 16.

“It wasn’t easy, but I told him: ‘Don’t give up. Jetters is our baby, don’t ever let it go,’” says Dania.

Their efforts bore fruit. Jetters Incz generated SGD600,000 in revenue in its first year, helped by major clients from Shaik’s former company who followed him. A decade later, revenue is expected to reach the upper end of SGD3 million in 2025.

In January 2025, the firm was named among Singapore’s 100 fastest-growing companies by The Straits Times and Germany-based research firm Statista, based on revenue growth between 2020 and 2023.

Jetters expanded rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic after Shaik moved his foreign workers out of dormitories just before the lockdown, enabling the company to take on more work.

He also purchased his first office property in Admiralty, later selling it at a profit when operations were relocated.

Shaik says Jetters was an early adopter of digitalization in the industry. He plans to tap the Internet of Things to transform it into a technology-driven company and is seeking a partner.

Although waste management was not his preferred career choice at 17, he says it is nothing to be embarrassed about.

“When people meet me at gala events, I say: ‘I clean longkangs (street drains).’ They tell me, ‘Don’t say that’, but how is that insulting?” he says.

“I’ve been overlooked, stepped upon, forgotten. It’s normal. So, I never look at the glass as half empty. I like to see it as half full.”

Studying may not be his strength, but Shaik believes it has given him a longer career runway than his peers, while mental resilience has kept him going.

“Life has been my best teacher.”