The Good Singaporean Son

From Setting Up A free port to Woo Uhnwis to Establishing the World’s First Commodities exchange in Naturally formed Diamonds, Belgian-turned-singaporean Alain Vandenborre Has Made It His Business to Spread Singapore’s Name Far and Wide Through Landmark Ventures.

- Karen Tee

He’s hunched over his antique writing desk with an array of sharpened pencil crayons spread out before him. Picking up a stick, Alain Vandenborre colours in a sketch – a picture of two unicorns.

Colouring is the 55-year-old serial entrepreneur’s latest hobby, and a method he uses to lull his mind into a meditative state for work. It was his wife, an art therapist, who introduced it to him. “It is an exercise that helps you focus and soothes the mind,” he says.

In fact, every item on his desk in the spacious, light-filled home office at his Tanglin Road residence has a purpose: to cultivate an environment of creativity and contemplation. His talismans include a Murano glass figurine of a unicorn, which symbolises peace, balance and healing to him, and a book of fish drawings by Dutch illustrator Mies Van Hout that he flips through to indicate his prevailing mood – happy, curious, etc. “Every single idea that has succeeded was conceived at this desk,” he says.

Since founding his first company at the age of 26, Vandenborre has been involved in a wide range of enterprises, from laser technology in his younger days to humanitarian work via the co-founding of art therapy humanitarian mission The Red Pencil with his wife, Laurence. And his latest venture, the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (Sdix), is the world’s first commodities exchange trading in naturally formed diamonds.

BLINGING IT ON

It was a eureka moment that he couldn’t let up on after learning about the diamond industry through his business dealings with an Israeli diamond logistics company. Essentially, Vandenborre is banking on the doubling of diamond prices over the next 15 years because of growing demand and the absence of new mines being explored.