Category: 2022

Robbie Antonio | Founder & CEO | Resident Holdings

The Global reach of technological-driven start-ups has opened up many new frontiers for organizations across the globe. For any leader having a clear vision to thrive in this disruption is vital for businesses. Leaders must be comfortable and should be open to various new ideas and innovations and they should communicate them to their employees and peers. At the core, no company or leader is immune from the force of technological shift. With the understanding of the current market landscape and identifying possible trends, Robbie Antonio is the Founder and CEO of Resident Holdings He has achieved success in the fields of property, fintech edutech, e-commerce, home accessories, beauty, fashion, jewelry, food, electronics, and gaming. His experience in brand marketing reached new heights when he launched his umbrella company:

Resident Holdings.

Below is his story,

Robbie reads a lot and meets a lot of fellow CEOs to understand the current market landscape and identify possible trends, opportunities, red flags that may come up. “You can never be overprepared when you’re in business. The direction and fate of the company rest on your decisions and inputs”, says Robbie.

Being a real estate developer in the field of consumer branding, he has worked with various celebrities and influencers for worldwide projects representing 20 companies involving fashion, fintech and edutech. Under the Resident Holdings Group is fast-growing and e-commerce companies. Antonio has achieved achievements in the fields of real estate and e-commerce, he is also venturing into e-services with upcoming companies such as Reform Legal Services, Rejuvenate Service Corporation, Reconcile Corporation, RACE, and so on.

Robbie is embarking on a more challenging role with Resident Holdings. He is rolling out and beefing up the company’s non-property related business units, as the company is increasing manpower exponentially to top-quality managers and employees so that it can help those companies hit the ground running. He is also putting up companies involved in e-commerce, services, fashion, fintech and edutech.

Robbie always keeps challenging himself to innovate continuously and his company is doing a staggered rollout of the companies to be able to introduce Resident Holding’s concepts and business models at different stages. The common thread that connects the business units is the celebrity partnership DNA. All of these companies are completely celebrity curated. He believes that by partnering with celebrities, reputable personalities and companies, it instantly elevates the image, perception, and value of any product.

Resident Holdings Group is a Southeast-Asia based global holding company of technologically-driven startups with a strategy of global expansion and interests in the fields of social media marketing, franchising, tech-based legal, medical, and accounting services. Its flagship company is unicorn startup Revolution Precrafted, a supplier of traditional and prefabricated homes and structures with a footprint in 31countries in Asia, Middle East, Europe, North and South America, and the Caribbean Islands. Resident Holdings traces the roots of to the formation of its flagship company, Revolution Precrafted in December 2015. At the time, there was very little awareness and preference for prefabricated homes. A lot of people have misconceptions about what prefab homes are. So the company came up with an idea to partner with some of the designers and architects in the world to curate transportable, modular homes. Since its launch, Revolution Precrafted has become the only unicorn company in the Philippines, valued at over $1bn. Robbie considers his experience in Revolution as an important highlight of his leadership path. He was able to form and lead a team committed to succeeding in a space that was previously not as celebrated and talked about.

Robbie has received several awards from different organizations as one of the youngest and most prolific collectors of international modern and post-war contemporary art. He has always believed in continuously improving to drive his team and company forward. He believes that itis the role of the CEO to always check the market landscape and think out of the box to come up with new projects, products, and solutions that people will patronize… things that will improve their lives. In the first place, he came up with the idea of Resident Holdings to introduce new businesses outside of the real estate sector, which he has been involved in for so long. Indeed, the CEO needs to create a spark that will drive the revolution within the company.

Robbie is recognized as “20 of the World’s Most Innovative Art Collectors,” in 2014, and also “12 Young Art Collectors to Watch in 2016.” He wants to surprise the market with new offerings and don’t like to rest on laurels. He also tries to incorporate a new element to every business unit to be different. CEO always faces the toughest task. His team introduces new concepts and new ideas all the time to create new revenue streams and sometimes, these ideas face questions and challenges from the board or the management committee. His game plan always breaks from convention and break new concepts. In a very competitive landscape, the first one who introduces new takes a sizable chunk of the market. He always wants to be the one to change the game by introducing something new.

Robbie’s vision is to be prepared to come up with different paths to achieve your goal and work hard to achieve it. “You have to convince everyone of the value of these concepts before they receive the green light”, says the leader. The problem is made even more complicated by regulatory limitations and standards. Once approved, you now have to think about operations, marketing, logistics. A CEO needs to lead all aspects of the business to make it succeed. The company has over 20 business units under Resident Holdings but it intends to come up with new business ideas. The company’s goal in the next 5 to 10 years is to be present in more industries and to be a truly global player., edutech, e-commerce, home accessories, beauty, fashion, jewelry, food, electronics, and gaming. His experience in brand marketing reached new heights when he launched his umbrella company: Resident Holdings.

by THE RITZ HERALD

Since raising well over US$1 billion with his prefabricated structures property-tech company Revolution Precrafted, Filipino real estate tycoon and art connoisseur Robbie Antonio has his sights firmly set on becoming the world’s largest supplier of designer homes. Prestige talks to the youngest person to make it on Forbes 50 Richest in the Philippines List for 2018. Here’s five essential facts you need to know about our October cover man!

Robbie has a degree in economics from Northwestern University and an MBA from Stanford University. His first real estate project following his graduation, and also his big break, is the 19-storey IM Pei-designed Centurion condominium in Manhattan.

2. His company, Revolution Precrafted, is officially the Philippines’ first unicorn.
If you’re not familiar with tech jargon, unicorn status means a tech company valued at US$1 billion or more and it’s been the goal of founder Robbie Antonio from the time he established Revolution Precrafted in December 2015. It raised Series B funding through the Singaporean VC firm K2 Global last October – the fastest any company in Southeast Asia has managed to do so. In addition, the company subsequently secured US$8.5 billion in consolidated project revenue from 25 countries (and counting); it’s behind homes and structures in North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In March, it signed a US$3.2-billion deal to design and construct villas and apartments on The World islands in Dubai. All this earned the 41-year-old the “2018 Philippines Real Estate Personality of the Year” award.

3. Revolution Precrafted is the sum of all his passions: architecture, art, tech and design.
With his background in real estate and his interest and art and tech, Robbie studied similarities among start-ups like Airbnb to crack their code to success. One of his inspirations was the French metalworker, designer and architect Jean Prouvé, who is best known for his work on prefabricated portable structures in the 1930s and 1940s, when the capabilities for mass production took off, as did the demand for affordable housing that could be built quickly and transported easily. Part of the reason for launching Revolution Precrafted was the continual requests he received from people to view his Rem Koolhaas-designed house “Stealth”

“I said, You know what I’ll do something better, I’ll do something for you, and at a very affordable price.”

And so he did, Revolution Precrafted now retails across the globe with its prefabricated modular homes and structures, designed by some 80 titans in the industry – including Zaha Hadid, Ron Arad, Jean Nouvel, Tom Dixon, Marcel Wanders, Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma, the Campana brothers, and more. The company’s regional fabrication plants or local contractors would set up the buildings once the shipment arrives.

“It’s crazy… it was quite a shocker. It’s all black concrete – and I live in a very conservative society. I chose Rem because I find him one of the most intellectual minds. He’s very academic, and he’s also very practical. Talk about obsession… I sent him 35,000 architectural images and items of research material, stating what I wanted, what I don’t like – I almost co-designed it,” he said.

5. His love for art started during his days as a student in New York City.
Art has been a huge fixture in Robbie Antonio’s life since his New York days, when he lived surrounded by the Met, MoMA, Whitney and Guggenheim; art auctions; and top collectors. And the emotional, imaginative quality of art provides a welcome reprieve from the analytical demands of his work. “I go through my day and my executive committee meetings are all about numbers – revenue, profit – then I head to an extremely different meeting where it’s about the creative process, and that’s what interests me, that balance in life,” he says. “The juxtaposition of the two and getting an amalgam of both – I love to be [in a position where I understand both worlds].”

In addition, his interest in art transcends mere auctions and acquisitions. Another venture keeping Robbie Antonio occupied is the US$1.1-billion Batulao Artscapes, situated on the outskirts of Manila. There he plans to construct four themed art museums designed by Pritzker winners, along with some 8,600 holiday or retirement homes. The concept was inspired by Naoshima in southern Japan, where the entire island is teeming with museums and installations, and buildings designed by Tadao Ando and Kazuhiro Ishii. And even as Revolution Precrafted is taking flight and Batulao Artscapes is under development, Antonio has his mind on possible endeavours outside the realm of real estate – fin-tech, med-tech and technology-based concepts that could be rolled out regionally.

Read the full interview with Robbie Antonio in the October issue of Prestige, available from all leading bookstores in Thailand.