Career Confessions: The former Head of Product who left a 12-year corporate career to keep her family’s curry legacy alive

Running a curry rice business from your home kitchen means your office is never truly closed. On any given day, Tay Jia Ling might be watching over a pot of braised pork belly at dawn, fielding customer feedback on packaging by mid-morning, and writing proposals for potential grants in the afternoon.

“It’s just surprises everyday and I have to figure out how I want to go about the situation,” she says with a grin. For someone who spent 12 years in the technology industry — where she could anticipate 90 per cent of her work — this kind of unpredictability is a significant shift.

Today, the 36-year-old is one half of Curry Kong, a home-based curry rice business she co-founded with her older brother, Tay Jia Han, in May last year. Both siblings walked away from lucrative salaries to do it — he from a restaurant management career in the United Kingdom, she from over a decade climbing the corporate ladder.

The catalyst? A message from Jia Han before he flew home, wondering if the two of them could revive what their parents had built. They owned a beloved cai png stall at Block 280 Tampines Street 22 for 20 years before it closed in 2014 as part of their parents’ retirement plan.

Citing a gap in the market for old-school flavours, the siblings convinced their parents to join their new curry rice venture. The family whittled 30 dishes from their retired stall to seven signature ones for curry rice, which includes chicken, mutton, chicken cutlet and pork meatballs.

Jia Ling recalls spending months preparing endlessly before launch. “I bootstrapped everything, such as the photoshoot, logo creation, website building, user research and content creation,” she says candidly. She would also practise video editing during her travels, scout branding inspiration around the world, and map out every detail of the business.

Starting from home was a deliberate choice too, as it was a way to keep overheads low and give themselves the runway to get things right without the pressure of rent. If you peeked into their Pasir Ris flat back then, you would find the family tweaking recipes, experimenting with packaging, and testing which food photos performed best on Grab Food — their main platform of sales.

Jia Ling and Jia Han both decided not to draw an income from their newfound business for the first two years, in order to put Curry Kong in the best financial position possible. Jia Ling also took strategic steps to pay off her car and sell a home she owned to ensure she was debt-free before embarking on Curry Kong.

“It’s hardly glamorous at all,” she confesses. “My goal was not to touch my savings, so my brother and I wake up early most days to become private-hire car drivers for a few hours before starting work at Curry Kong. I think it’s scary if you are on this entrepreneurship journey and your savings are depleting every month.”

In July, Curry Kong will open its first physical space in Plaza 8 @ Changi Business Park. From their profits and savings, Jia Ling and Jia Han had accumulated about $10,000 to invest in their next chapter.

“Corporate life felt like a constant chase for the next high. But when I started to introspect, I realised what I thought was happiness wasn’t,” Jia Ling muses. “As consumers ourselves, I also feel a growing sense of loss [when it comes to local food] as it is increasingly difficult to find authentic and well-executed heritage food.”

“If I’m able to build Curry Kong to last this and the next generation, it will mean a lot to me.”

What does your day-to-day look like at Curry Kong?

It always starts off with private-hire driving in the early morning. After which, it will be anything to do with Curry Kong. I have fixed shifts to be in the kitchen, but outside-of-kitchen work really varies from day to day. It can be viewing shops, writing proposals for grants, speaking to F&B peers about collaborations or searching for potential furniture. I take one day off per week so I don’t lose my partner!

How different is your job now from corporate life?

It’s very different from corporate life. Back then, I could anticipate the kind of work that needed to be done 90 per cent of the time. Now it’s just surprises everyday and I have to figure out how I want to go about each situation. 

The biggest difference is me cutting back on catching up with friends due to time and financial constraints — I’ve learnt to be super intentional about where and who I spend my time on.

But what remains the same is routine. I love routine because it keeps me grounded and productive. Even in this world of unexpected work, I plan out recurring blocks of time to tackle all the unexpected stuff at once. And I try to keep my workout routine going to remain sane.

What is the biggest lesson you have learnt since starting Curry Kong?

I can’t scale a business faster than I can regulate myself.

How did you set financial goals for Curry Kong? What advice would you give someone in a similar position?

Firstly, Jia Han and I worked out our personal finances and discussed what could be eliminated. We had to know how long we could survive with zero income at the start. Then we mapped out the timeline of big-ticket upcoming expenses and what our income expectations would be when the time came.

After which, we asked ourselves, “What is the ultimate lifestyle we want in the longer term?”

Once we were aligned on those answers, it outlined the progressive financial targets for Curry Kong. For instance, at the start we were ready to have no income for two years, which set a certain level of expectation from year three onwards. So our goal for years one and two was to progressively build revenue to meet that baseline. Anything more is a bonus; anything less is a reevaluation of whether to continue.

My advice: be clear about your decision-making checkpoints and criteria on your entrepreneurial journey. Know what will make you stay and what will make you walk away, and be willing to revisit those answers as life changes.

Are you afraid the business might fail? How do you deal with the uncertainty?

There are days it gets to me, but most of the time it’s not logical. I read somewhere that we have about 50,000 thoughts a day — we definitely don’t need to give every thought attention. Journaling works for me. I always remind myself that I anticipated fear creeping up every now and then in this journey, but I’d do it anyway. So I just let it be the passing clouds.

I also remind myself to give my best in every situation, so I know there are no “what ifs” — it was the best decision I could have made at that point. The only thing left is to deal with the next situation as it comes.

I’m not afraid of the business failing because I see it as a learning journey. I know I’ll bring many transferable experiences from Curry Kong to whatever comes next. And if it ever happens, I’ll probably have an intense AI exploration phase before heading back to the tech sector — and I’d want to spend time doubling down on my Mandarin!

What has been your proudest moment with Curry Kong so far?

It was a Saturday night in January this year. I was out having drinks when a customer sent me a direct message (DM) at 11pm to say she had a really bad day — until she had Curry Kong. She just wanted to drop us a message to express her gratitude for bringing back something so homely and comforting.

I welled up a little reading it, because I truly understand how a plate of comfort food can lift someone’s mood. I’ve had my own moments like that too. For me, it was a simple plate of aglio olio that did the job.

It was at that point I realised Curry Kong had become more than just a business or a legacy revival. It has become a small source of comfort for someone on a difficult day. What we’re building isn’t just about food, but it’s about creating something familiar, something grounding, something that quietly shows up for people when they need it most.

What’s next for Curry Kong? 

Opening our physical store in July! We are going all out and hopefully it sets a strong foundation for more.

My definition of success is simply to be a sustainable business that feeds us and achieves the original objective of preserving authentic heritage flavours. If Curry Kong succeeds and I were to build something out of pure passion and fun, I’d love to create a space that brings like-minded people together.

Somewhere spontaneous, where people share knowledge, learn new things, go on adventures, have a safe space for ranting, and lots of laughs. It would be great if it could eventually become a place where we find fulfilment later in life.