SINGAPORE-BASED businesswoman Olivia Lum won the Ernst Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Award on Saturday night in Monaco. Ms Lum is the founder and chief executive of water treatment company Hyflux and is the first businesswoman to win the award since it was instituted in 2001.

Abandoned as a child and raised in poverty in her native Malaysia, Ms Lum moved to Singapore at the age of 15 and gained a science degree. She worked as a chemist with pharma giant Glaxo before selling her car and house in 1989 to raise 20,000 Singapore dollars to start a company called Hydrochem, a predecessor to Hyflux.

Speaking to the media after winning the award, Ms Lum recounted her start in business.

“I was one of five adopted children and we all had to learn how to make a living,” she said.

“We all had to learn how to sell products on the street: perhaps that experience of having nothing when I was young taught me how to survive in the harshest conditions.”

Hyflux uses a desalination process to clean water that has been polluted by industrial processes.

Ms Lum said her motivation in starting the business was to provide clean drinking water to all and to protect the environment.

“At the age of 28 I thought, naively, that I wanted to save the world,” she said.

From a modest start, Hyflux is now a listed company with annual revenues of $450 million (€308 million) and 2,300 employees across Asia, the Middle East and north Africa. It was recently named preferred bidder for Singapore’s largest desalination plant.

Ireland was represented at the awards by Brian Conlon, founder and chief executive of listed financial group First Derivatives, which provides software and services to investment banks, hedge funds and other high-volume traders.

Irish technology entrepreneur Brian Long, the managing partner of Atlantic Bridge Ventures, was a member of the judging panel. A total of 49 entrepreneurs from around the world were entered for this year’s competition.