A Permanent Resident of Singapore and citizen of Australia, Michael was born in Laos of Teochew parentage. His country was then in the midst of a devastating war. Leaving their home that was all but destroyed, his family migrated to Australia. Settling in Sydney, the Ma family developed a successful food import business and through it all, Michael excelled academically and graduated from the University of Wollongong with a double major in Economics and Marketing.

His commerce background has indeed served him well as he went on to work as a commodities trader before founding the IndoChine Group. Its inaugural outlet, IndoChine Club Street, was opened in late 1999 and was inspired by the modern Asian lifestyle with colonial influences. Inspired by his passion for food, entertaining and design, Michael Ma saw a potential market for ‘nutraceutical’ cuisine - food that is nutritional, with pharmaceutical benefits - from Indochina, namely Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Even while being his dynamic and adventurous best in keeping up with the constant competition faced in this ever-changing F&B industry, Michael remains an active and fervent environmentalist and conservationist. From the very beginning, Michael personally made it an IndoChine policy not to serve endangered species-related foods, such as sharks’ fin, caviar, bluefin or yellow-fin tuna in all of IndoChine’s kitchens, amongst other things, since inception in 1999.

He is a council member of the STB Tourism Consultative Council (TCC), a board member of the Singapore Government’s Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) and a member of Singapore’s national movement known as GEMS, or Go the Extra Mile, a campaign to push service standards in Singapore to an international level. Michael also participates regularly in grooming and motivating aspiring young entrepreneurs by speaking at local universities and conferences.