Today, Mr Shah runs Titanium Limousines, one of the most established limousine companies in Singapore serving corporate clients, event companies, and families island-wide. He has driven motorcades for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, handled VIP transfers for Resort World Sentosa, and built a fleet of 15 vehicles from nothing.
But for most of his twenties, Mr Shah was the person his family was rather ashamed of. Gold hair, tattoos, gambling debts he could not count. He was a waiter captain whose tips had dried up, whose debts were mounting, and whose options had run out.
This is the story of how he built his way back.
The Job That Changed Everything
Mr Shah was managing waiters at a karaoke lounge in Singapore when the entertainment industry slowed and the tips stopped coming. He was already carrying heavy gambling debts. With a wife, three children, and no savings, he needed a way out fast.
A regular customer at the lounge mentioned he was running limousine transfers for Marina Bay Sands, which had just opened. He had 50 to 100 vehicles stationed at the hotel and was paying drivers $10 an hour around the clock.
Mr Shah asked if he could drive.
The answer was yes.
“I started to bring my toothbrush, my bath towel, and sit inside the car all day just to work non stop.”
He worked for 5 days straight without going home. Then longer. At $240 a day working around the clock, he calculated he could clear $6,000 to $7,000 a month if he never stopped. So he did not stop. He quit gambling, packed his life into a duffel bag, and lived out of the car at the hotel.
For the first time in years, he had a clear plan to settle his debts.
Learning the Business the Hard Way
Three months in, the Marina Bay Sands contract ended. The car owner Mr Shah worked for suddenly had five vehicles and almost no jobs.
Mr Shah went back to him anyway, and after some back and forth, they worked out an arrangement. Mr Shah would go out and find his own clients. He would drive the car owner’s vehicle, cover his own petrol costs, and handle all client collection himself. Whatever total sales he brought in, they would split 50/50.
During those days, there wasn’t Grab, Uber or any other digital taxi booking platforms to book a taxi in Singapore.
“You had to go wherever you could find customers. Coffee shops, airports, wherever you could find drivers. You needed to sit down, drink coffee with them.”
Mr Shah learned which drivers sat at which coffee shops near the airport. He showed up, drank kopi, and asked if anyone had jobs they needed covered. They gave him the ones nobody else wanted: the 1am runs, the 3am airport pickups, the Jurong Island transfers at 6am. He took every single one.
Monthly sales hit $10,000. But collecting that money from other drivers was a different battle. Everyone paid late. Some did not pay at all. Mr Shah was still handing over 50% to the car owner regardless, draining whatever buffer he had built.
Then the car owner did something that pushed Mr Shah out for good.
Once he saw that Mr Shah could generate his own sales independently, he stopped giving Mr Shah any jobs at all. His logic was straightforward: Mr Shah could find work himself, so the available bookings should go to the other drivers who could not. Mr Shah was covering every aspect of the business: driving, finding clients, chasing payments, while being sidelined from the very jobs he had first helped create.
He stayed two more months hoping things would change. They did not.
By then, the financial strain had already forced the family to make a drastic move. Mr Shah had relocated his wife and children from Singapore to Johor just to cut costs. They had to make 5am causeway crossings every day, his kids were waiting at school until evening, and it was not sustainable any more.
He quit. Told the car owner he was done, handed back the keys, and spent the next month doing nothing. He had no income, no plan, a family in Johor, and his debts still unpaid.
Then one idea surfaced.
His Mother’s Last $31,000
Mr Shah had a small old car. If he sold it and topped up another $30,000, he could purchase a limousine-grade vehicle and offer limousine transport services himself.
The problem was he had nothing left. Zero.
He went to his mother.
She looked at what was in her account. She only had $31,000. But she still gave him the $30,000 he needed for his limousine vehicle.
“This time if I take her money, I cannot die. Like I cannot lose it. Do or die.”
He has never forgotten the weight of that moment. His mother’s entire savings were handed over to him. She believed in him despite all the bad habits that he had engaged in in the past.
Mr Shah bought his brand new limousine car. And in 2012, Titanium Limousines was born.
One Car a Year, Every Year
Year one was relentless.
Mr Shah barely went home. He slept in the car, drove through nights, and took every job nobody else wanted. On Valentine’s Day, he left his wife at the cinema when a booking came through. During family outings, he dropped everyone at the nearest hawker centre and went off for his job. His wife struggled to understand it at first. But eventually she did.
He cleared his gambling debts in year one. In year two, he cleared nine maxed-out credit cards. Then he bought a second car.
Then a third. Then a fourth. One car a year, every year.
The fleet grew. The clients grew with it. Titanium Limousines began serving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, their vehicles in motorcades alongside Traffic Police outriders, carrying ministers and foreign dignitaries. They held a contract with Resort World Sentosa for cross-border VIP transfers to Johor, Kuala Lumpur, and Malacca. Corporate clients, entertainment companies, international events. None of it came by accident. All of it was earned the same way the first job was, by showing up and outworking everyone else.
By 2019, Titanium Limousines stood at 15 vehicles and was among the more established limousine companies in Singapore.
Covid-19: Fifteen Cars, Zero Jobs
Titanium Limousines had just taken delivery of several new vehicles when Singapore locked down.
The borders closed. Jobs stopped overnight. Every car Mr Shah had spent nearly a decade building sat idle.
He kept his drivers on as long as he could. He told them to look for work and that whoever found something first could leave. One by one they went, some to Covid-19 transport contracts, some to parcel delivery, some out of the industry entirely. He made sure everyone landed somewhere before letting them go fully.
Then he parked the cars. Across HDB lots, borrowed spaces from neighbours, one to a slot. His neighbours noticed.
“Hey, you want to open a car showroom? All your cars are parked right here.”
He sold two cars the day the Prime Minister announced the covid-19 lockdown. The rest of the cars sat idle for nearly a year.
When the borders reopened, Mr Shah started again the only way he knew how. Alone, behind the wheel, same 24-hour availability, same commitment he had brought to that very first job in 2011. For six months he drove by himself before hiring one more driver. Then another. Slowly he rebuilt his team.
But the market had changed. Post-covid, competitors flooded the limousine market and private hire industry. Cheap rentals and slashed deposits grew the market. Less committed drivers came and went. The business that had been building for a decade now had to fight to hold its ground.
The Lesson Mr Shah Carries
Mr Shah does not talk about success the way most people do. He talks about what it felt like to have nothing and what it took to refuse to stay there.
He built one of Singapore’s most resilient limousine companies without capital, without connections, and without anyone handing him a single advantage. What he had was a mother who believed in him when almost no one else did, a work ethic that most people would find impossible to sustain, and an honesty he held onto even when the system around him rewarded the opposite.
His mother no longer goes to family gatherings feeling alone. She walks in with her head held high. For Mr Shah, that matters more than any milestone Titanium Limousines has ever hit.
“I feel very happy for that. Not so much for myself. But at least she doesn’t have to face them like how she used to.”
Titanium Limousines is still on the road. Still run to the same standard Mr Shah set in year one, when it was just him, one car, and everything on the line. If you are looking for a limousine company in Singapore built on more than a business plan, you can find out more at Titanium Limousine’s official website.
