Tom Tom International Franchise Opportunity in Singapore

Couple of months back, I was exploring alternative investments and stumbled across franchising. I explored ijooz but they no longer accept any unless you have a place to put their machines. I also asked about Coffee Hive, Kcuts, My Little Coconut etc (most are businesses I myself patronize at) but most requires extensive capital and time to get it started. They also require you to be physically there which isn't what I'm looking for.

As I was about to kill off the idea to continue looking out and just go back to good old REITs / Stocks / ETF, I was served with an advertisement on Facebook. I supposed the search term "Franchise" being entered into the google, somehow lead me to being targeted.

The advertisement was pretty straightforward, pay $15,000 and get returns of 8-10% annually. At that time, I think they are in the midst of setting up installment plans. I fill up the form, just shortly after, a guy texted me on whatsapp to follow up. At first, I rejected but I have to say the salesperson handle the objection pretty well, and we decided to head down the showroom at Gambas to hear him out. On the day we supposed to meet, he texted and mentioned some delays and wanted to reschedule it. (in my mind, was wondering if this is a red flag). We ask if can meet later because we already blocked out time and was preparing to head out, so we pushed the initial 5pm appointment to 5.15pm.

During the session, he gave us some samples to test, company projections, their go-to-market strategy, and what are the roles of a franchisee.

I'll go into detail how this all works and share some real numbers as well since I started couple of months back.

How does TomTom franchise works?

Initial Investment

You will need to purchase a "zone" also known as the franchise fee for $15,000 (GST not included). So total payable including GST is actually $16,350. According to the salesperson, this will increase down the road. I was number 67 in the entire 500 as of July 2024.

Zone segmentation

According to TomTom, they divided the entire Singapore into 500 zones equally taking into account the number of households etc. For this, we can only trust they do it correctly. No way for me to verify if that's split equally or not.

What are the returns?

Any purchase delivered to the zone you bought, you will receive 10% of the sales paid out monthly to the designated bank account you filled up when you sign the contract. The 10% will be paid for a period of 30 years. Needless to say this is subjected to the business still being around, a risk you need to take. Same goes to other listed companies as well, just that the likelihood of the big business dying are smaller.

I paid the sum of $16,350 via grab (to earn some rewards) on 16 July 2024. Being a huge sum, I want to at least get back some rewards (be it cashback or miles - I use UOB Absolute for this, pathetic but better than nothing).

We started receiving payouts in August 2024. These are the payouts we received since then.

They also send a report monthly that show you the breakdown of each postal code, how many fishballs are sold to that postal code and how much is your returns for those. Attaching one of the report for your reference.

So the average for these few months are roughly $140 per month. If we assume this sum to continue, we are looking at $1680 per year. With initial capital of $16,350, the yield is roughly 10%.

So I need roughly 10 years to take back my initial sum and the rest of 20 years will be profit. You will also need to account for opportunity cost since the same $16,350 can be deployed on the financial market and reap the returns immediately without forgoing the capital.

Monthly giveaway

As part of the franchise program, you will also receive 30 packs of fishballs. Together with the fishballs, they will also give 30 pack of seasoning (Mala seasoning) which is my favorite and a lot of discount coupons that can be used at their online store to get a discount. They would want you to give it to your friends / neighbours to let them test it. My guess is they hope your friends / neighbours will lead to becoming customers or even franchisee.

You might be thinking, can I sell these 30 packs? Yes you can. However under their rules, you can't post it online. You can do group buys within your estate. We did one of them to drive awareness of the product. For us, we wanted a more handsfree approach to this so we usually give them away to friends. We can't consume 30 packs on our own. They usually distribute this mid of the month. They will reach out to you via whatsapp to check when they can deliver them. They also give you the option to skip but once you skipped, they won't replenish the 30 packs in the following month.

Events

They organize events around heartland malls to boost visibility of their product. You can follow their social media to check it out.

Referral

They also have referral program but only for franchisee. After being a franchisee, you can refer either businesses that are keen to stock up their fishballs or other franchisee (until the 500 zones are fully taken up).

What do you get for referral?

For referring businesses, you will receive 1% 3% (information correct as of 24 Dec 2025) of all the sales that the business purchase. For referring franchisee, you will receive 1% 3% (information correct as of 24 Dec 2025) of the sales made in the referrer zone. Eg. If that zone sells $10,000 worth of fishballs, 89% 87% goes to TomTom, 1% 3% goes to the referrer, 10% goes to the referree. If that zone is purchased directly with no referral, then 90% of the sales goes to TomTom, 10% goes to the franchisee. Which means TomTom is giving up their 1% 3% to reward you for making that sale. Not too bad.

Business Referral Calculator

Want to know how much you can earn from referring a business? Use the calculator below:

This is just 1 stall. Imagine you know 10 and they sell 300 bowls daily. Well we can keep dreaming hahaha.

Conclusion

If you are keen to invest or have businesses that would like to stock up their fishballs, feel free to reach out to discuss any collaboration. You can send me an email here. Hope this article gives you a more in-depth look from a franchisee point of view.