OCTOBER 27, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 42 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK

Asia's Digital Elite

T H E   D I G I T A L   2 5
•David Mok •Hanson Cheah •William Lo •Juliet Wu •Jeffrey Koo Jr.	•Narayana Murthy •Enoki Keiichi •Sim Wong Hoo •Richard Li •Lee Jae Woong	•Horii Yuji •Lee Yong Teh •Edward Tian •Kutaragi Ken •Peter and Antony Yip	•Son Masayoshi •James Murdoch •Chan-drababu Naidu •Matei Mihalca	•Chin Dae Je •Matsunaga Mari •Wu Jichuan •Stan Shih •George Yeo Yong Boon

Enoki Keiichi Director, Gateway Business Dept., NTT DoCoMo Age: 51 Prized possessions: a 12-year-old Nissan Laurel, a "huge" (read: old) Panasonic PC. E-mail: press@nttdocomo.com

At first glance, there is nothing in Enoki Keiichi's resumE to suggest he is anything but your run-of-the-mill Japanese salaryman. He studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, graduating with an electrical-engineering degree in 1974. He joined telephone monopoly Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, a respectable, if stodgy, institution. But when NTT spun off its wireless division to create DoCoMo in 1992, Enoki got creative. Inspired by his children's pocket game machines, he decided to bring the Internet to Japan through the cellphone — not the PC. The concept of wireless Internet access was born.

Enoki's idea has revolutionized the way Asia interacts with the Internet. The subscriber base for DoCoMo's I-mode commercial mobile Web access service has exploded in the past three years, as the Japanese exchange e-mail, check bank balances and pay bills with cellphones. DoCoMo is bringing the "post-PC era" to the rest of Asia, Europe and the U.S. Enoki's motto: "Do your job in a way that doesn't make your subordinates sad!" Nobody dares accuse him of being a salaryman now.

Sim Wong Hoo Chairman, Creative Technology Age: 39 Last Book Written: Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millennium

Sim Wong Hoo first hit it big in the late 1980s when with childhood friend Ng Kai Wa he created the technology that would become Sound Blaster, the audio-system-on-a-chip that gave voice to computers. Today his Singapore-based Creative Technology is making waves with its Nomad line of MP3 players. Along the way have been many notable successes and not a few disasters — all par for the course for a rising I.T. star. Sim, who lists "being creative" as his hobby, thrives on taking risks and making the contrarian move. He grew up poor in Singapore and worked on an oil rig after college. Ten years before the Sound Blaster, he told a friend he wanted "to sell 100 million units of something." The quest continues. Sim is trying to position his company in the Internet economy as a key supplier of digital music hardware and software.

Richard Li Chairman and CEO, Pacific Century Group Age: 33 (34 on Nov. 8) Work experience: Says he once worked as a cashier at a California McDonald¹s Hobbies: Scuba diving, flying aircraft

After his flagship Pacific Century CyberWorks was awarded the government's CyberPort project last year, Stanford-educated Li emerged as Hong Kong's New Economy savior. Touted by some as Asia's answer to Bill Gates, the second son of property magnate Li Ka-shing seemed to relish the role thrust upon him and the opportunity to carve out his own empire separate from his father's. In a battle for Cable & Wireless HKT, Li beat Singapore Telecom with borrowed cash and over-valued shares. His broadband vision was born. Now Hong Kong's most talked-about tycoon has to prove that PCCW's content-to-delivery business model will work. The trouble is, investors have soured on his company, pulling the stock down from HK$26 to a low of HK$7.10 in just months. Two ventures have unraveled. Critics have been unimpressed with his Network of the World vortal. Heavy in debt, PCCW had to renegotiate its IP backbone and mobile telephony deals with Telstra to prevent the Australian telco from walking. Li says he is unfazed, but the coming year may be his defining moment. PCCW surely won't tank, but it — and Li — will be facing more rough times.

Lee Jae Woong CEO, Daum Communications Age: 32 Favorite sport: Surfing - on the Internet. E-mail: jwlee@daumcorp.com

Naming a left-wing revolutionary like Che Guevara as your personal hero isn't the most politically correct thing to do in a country with a strong conservative streak. But then, if the French-educated head of South Korea's largest Internet portal were more conventional, he wouldn't be where he is today. With Lee at its helm, Daum.net accounts for more than half of all e-mail users in Korea. Lee did it with decidedly un-leftist tactics. In advertisements, Lee appealed to raw patriotism, urging Internet users to choose Daum over U.S.-based Yahoo! Korea, which held the top portal ranking until recently. Beating Yahoo! at its own game has been an uphill battle, but Lee relishes his anti-establishment fight — much like his hero.

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