Maha Sinnathamby
Maha Sinnathamby AM is one of Australia’s most iconic entrepreneurs, declared as one of Queensland’s 50 greatest thinkers of all time by Newscorp in 2014.
He is an Australian businessman and property developer and the entrepreneur behind the Greater Springfield Development in Queensland, the largest master-planned community in Australia.
Following his childhood spent on a British-owned rubber estate in the small farming village of Rantau, Negeri Sembilan, Maha moved to Australia and studied civil engineering at the University of New South Wales. After graduating, he worked as a civil and design engineer for several years in South East Asia before returning to Australia.
He started his own property business in Perth in 1971, before moving to Queensland in the early 1980s. He continued building the company with numerous small residential subdivisions and several commercial projects in the region.
In 1992 with business partner Bob Sharpless, Maha bought a 2,860 hectare area of land in Ipswich, south-west of Brisbane, for $7.9 million. He then lobbied for basic education and transport infrastructure to be built in the area.
The Greater Springfield area was designed as Australia's largest master-planned community (10th largest globally), and is focused on interconnected pillars of health, education, and information technology.
Currently, more than $15 billion has been invested by public and private stakeholders into the project. A$1.2 billion dual track major rail line and transit hub was established in 2013 and connected Greater Springfield to the wider South East Queensland area. Greater Springfield's current population is approximately 35,000, with a predicted growth to 105,000 by 2030.
Maha established Springfield City Group (formerly Springfield Land Corporation), of which he is the chairman, in conjunction with the purchase of the plot that would become Greater Springfield.
In 2019, Springfield City Group was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of their visionary entrepreneurship in establishing Springfield, as a nation-building project and Australia's first privately-constructed city.
Sinnathamby's work was acknowledged globally in 2010 with the emerging Greater Springfield being named the world's best master-planned community by the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI). He also won the Ernst and Young Master Entrepreneur of the Year.
Sinnathamby has donated significant amounts of land and funds for vital social infrastructure, and established a program of scholarships within Greater Springfield to assist people with limited access to education.
Part of his philanthropic donations have also enabled the establishment of the UNSW Founders 10x Accelerator program, which enables program delivery and seed investment into UNSW’s entrepreneurs and high impact startups.