Mang Inasal

Injap Sia

By Tony Lopez | Apr. 04, 2014 at 12:01am

In above six areas, entrenched feudal families and oligarchs are ascendant, leaving limited space for such dynamic upstarts like Andrew Tan, now the Philippines’ fourth richest individual, and Lucio Co, ranked by Forbes as among the ten richest Filipinos. The politics and the economy of this country are owned by no more than 80 families.

Once in a while, some make it to top-tier wealth through sheer genius, hard work and indomitable spirit. One such guy is Edgar “Injap” Sia II of Iloilo.

Injap is the new Henry Sy Sr. or John Gokongwei Jr. of the 21st century.

With P2.4 million borrowed from his father, Injap started the Mang Inasal barbecue chicken business on a vacant parking lot that nobody wanted to lease in Robinsons Mall Iloilo.

Today, Mang Inasal has 462 restaurants, 14,000 workers, over P11 billion in annual sales, and market value of about P5 billion. And Injap is a multi-billionaire.

This is a guy who dropped out in college (architecture) because he wanted to strike on his own at an early age. In Iloilo City, he helped set up a grocery store for his parents at age 17, and operated a photo developing shop at 18, a small hotel at 19, a laundry shop chain at 21, his first Mang Inasal outlet at 26, and his own real estate company at 32.

At age 33, he sold his Mang Inasal chain, with 338 stores then, to fast food giant to Jollibee Foods Corp. for P3 billion, retaining 30% of the barbecue chicken chain.

The serial entrepreneurship has made Injap a millionaire at 25, a multi-millionaire at 28, a billionaire at 30, and a multi-billionaire by age 33, the youngest among the current but small crop of Filipino mega-billionaires.

The feat is made more remarkable by the fact that Injap has had no formal training in business, except the weekends he spent tending to his parents’ grocery store in Iloilo when he was a boy in short pants.

Injap made it big in fastfood, with his Mang Inasal. He built one Mang...