[2] Founded by Singaporean-Indian land owner William Lawrence Soma Basapa, the name comes from the location on a 10-hectare site on Punggol Road, possibly near Sungei Dekar (now called Coney Channel).

[2] Originally located on 549 Serangoon Road,[4] the private zoo owned by William Lawrence Soma Basapa (1893–1943) had a collection included 200 animals, including a Bengal tiger named Apay,[5] seals, polar bears, chimpanzees, spectacled monkeys, Shetland ponies, zebras, a black leopard, Malayan tapirs, and orangutans, as well as 2,000 birds.

[7] To accommodate large number of both animals and visitors, the zoo was eventually moved to a larger 10-ha plot near the Punggol seafront in 1928.

"[5] Reginald Burton, in his memoir of "personal experiences as a captain in the 4th Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment, captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942,"[11] describes encountering a zebra released from the zoo.

By the end of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, the cages and structures that had been left intact were flattened and the grounds levelled by bulldozers.