Gokongwei looked back at his early days in the family business in a chat with fellow bilyonaryo Jaime Augusto Zobel De Ayala in an episode of BPI Preferred’s “After Six” vlog.
The son of the late bilyonaryo John Gokongwei said he was given a job at the URC warehouse when he was on a break as a student at the elite Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Gokongwei said the job was an ego check since his classmates spent their working days at Wall Street.
“When I was an upcoming junior, I spent the summer in the warehouse of our department store. Here I was, a high-flying Wharton student — and my job was to put the price tags on to like, underwear, or jeans,” he recalled.
“All my friends were going, ‘Oh, I got a job in Goldman Sachs, in Morgan Stanley, McKinsey,’ all the top jobs in the US,” Gokongwei shared. “I got a great job working for my father in Universal Robina Corporation. I was a salesman there and I remember my first paycheck, it was P2,300.”
Gokongwei said his father later gave him a company car, but it wasn’t a luxury four-wheel drive. What he got was a 20-year-old Datsun, the value of which had long depreciated then.
The experience of starting at the bottom proved useful for Gokongwei as he steers JG Summit to greater heights.
SOURCE: Bilyonaryo
