Building A Desired Path

While dealing with the pandemic, home-based learning and chocolate bribes, start-up darling Darius Cheung plots a better solution to today’s property problems.

- Farhan Shah

Darius Cheung appeared on my Zoom screen wearing a mask, the de facto accessory in a Covid-19 world. Cheung was not at home. As if on cue, the serial entrepreneur offered without being asked: “I’m at the hospital.” His four-year-old daughter Shan had fallen just a few hours before the interview and sustained a big gash on her elbow. Cheung and his wife Roshni Mahtani, CEO of Tickled Media, rushed her to the A&E department. “There was a lot of bleeding and we weren’t sure how serious the injury was. But the doctors have looked at it and said that she’s going to be okay. She probably just needs a few stitches. Honestly, I think that’s as much excitement as I’ve had this year,” says Cheung with a wry smile. That might be a strange statement to make, considering the state of the world we live in now but Cheung is Zen personified. His friends and loved ones have said that he might be a little too easy-going, which some might consider peculiar considering that Cheung heads 99.co, one of the biggest property technology portals in the region. “In a way, I don’t think this is that big of a deal if you consider it in the grand scheme of things.”

His daughter, on the other, is a huge deal to him. His Instagram feed is peppered with shots of Shan growing up. From kindergarten graduation to playing dress-up for Halloween, parenthood has changed the man he is today.