Most people try to make their jobs sound more impressive. Shaik Nifael does the opposite: "I clean longkangs for a living."
He left school without the conventional qualifications his parents had hoped for and ended up doing the work he had been warned about growing up. At first, even Shaik was embarrassed by it. Then something shifted: engineers were listening to his advice, clients relied on him when buildings had problems, and he realised the job people looked down on was highly technical and hard to replace.
That experience became the foundation for Jetters Incz.
Along the way, Shaik took a S$1,900 management trainee salary, learnt sales the hard way, and later secured S$200,000 in backing from businessman Kelvin Neo. Jetters has since grown into a waste-management business reported to be generating around S$3 million in annual revenue.
This isn’t a "school doesn’t matter" story. It’s about what happens when you stop judging a career by how impressive it sounds and start asking where the real demand, skill and opportunity are.
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