Leonard Tan Khang Hwee

Leonard Tan Khang Hwee (born August 3, 1978; Chinese: 陈康辉) is an entrepreneur from Singapore, best known as Founder and CEO of PurpleClick Media Pte Ltd

Early life and career

Leonard Tan Khang Hwee was born into a Chinese family in Singapore. His family was not well-to-do during his younger days and he learnt to earn his pocket money through buying and selling of erasers when he was in Primary school. His first experience in setting up a business entity came about when he was studying for his Bachelor of Business in the National University of Singapore. He set up a tuition agency with his school mate when he saw an unmet demand of university students who wanted to earn an extra keep by giving tuition. They later shut it down after they graduated from school to pursue their individual careers.

Leonard then went on to the Illinois Institute of Technology in United States for his Masters degree in eCommerce and started his second business – an online bookstore. After graduation, he took up a job doing door-to-door sales for Standard Chartered Bank. Thereafter, he joined Yahoo as a Sales Account Manager to re-launch a product and do sales for the SME markets.

Business

On 17 January 2006, Leonard Tan Khang Hwee incorporated PurpleClick Media Pte Ltd, an online marketing Walking away from a five-figured monthly salary, Leonard started PurpleClick Media with the support of the top management of Yahoo as a 2-man team. Authorized resellers of both Yahoo and Google, PurpleClick is now a multimillion-dollar start-up with 22 staff and a compounded annual growth rate of 57 percent.

Leonard ran PurpleClick as Managing Director until 2010 when he became CEO to focus on overall expansion plans.

Awards and recognition