Open For Business

Founded in Kota Kinabalu in 2015, Borenos Fried Chicken is an independent fast-food chain that has steadily grown into a highly successful eight-figure enterprise. Over the past twelve months, the company has aggressively scaled from six to eleven outlets,  officially establishing a foothold in the Klang Valley with locations in Puchong, Damansara Uptown, and Bandar Baru Bangi. Along the way, the business has proven its market demand, securing Grab's Crowd's Favourite Western Food award three years running and a BrandLaureate World Halal award.

Despite posting strong per-outlet revenue in its home state, crossing the South China Sea has presented its founders with fresh operational hurdles. And after eleven years building brand equity and community backing in Sabah, Borenos has effectively had to start from zero in West Malaysia - acquiring customers from scratch while competing directly against hundreds of established global franchise outlets. 

In this Malaysia Day special, Co-founder & CEO Janice Yeo talks to us about the decision to build a homegrown brand rather than importing another foreign franchise. We also discuss the absolute limits of relying on the Sabahan diaspora as a primary customer acquisition channel in the Klang Valley, and exactly what structural changes are required for more East Malaysian enterprises to successfully go national.

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As residential floor plans across the Klang Valley continue to shrink, Mocof has built a highly profitable, seven-figure business by addressing the gap in spatial efficiency. Operating under the SPAZE label, the company manufactures premium transformable furniture, such as wall beds that fold into shelving and sofas that convert into beds, engineered with high-end European compressed-air mechanisms. The fully bootstrapped business has maintained steady 8 to 10 percent year-on-year growth for fifteen years, operating premium showrooms in Pavilion KL and Setia City Mall while securing lucrative B2B contracts with ANSA Hotel and Paramount Property.

Despite this established retail and manufacturing success, founder Eric Cha is now betting the company's next aggressive growth phase entirely on software. Mocof is developing a proprietary AI layout tool designed to ingest condominium floor plans and instantly generate optimised, space-saving designs with fully validated upfront costs. 

Eric joins us to discuss the realities of their global supply chain - pairing European mechanisms with Chinese materials and Malaysian assembly, and what genuinely makes a transformable bed structurally safe. We also dissect their new AI software, to explore what the tool actually accomplishes.

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Atlas Collectif is a performance running apparel brand operating out of Kuala Lumpur and Dubai, producing technical kits built on design, performance, and sustainability. 

Within three years of launching, the brand has scaled to over RM3 million in annual revenue, recording 178 percent year-on-year growth. Operating with a lean core team of just six people, the business has successfully established 20 distribution points across five countries and secured major strategic partnerships, including a three-year deal with adidas that will evolve into a full capsule collection in 2027, and a partnership with the KL Half Marathon to outfit roughly 8,000 runners.

Co founder Hugh Koh joins us to discuss building a globally competitive athletic brand from Kuala Lumpur. We also discuss the USD 400,000 seed round to accelerate its physical and international expansion, and how the company utilises community as their primary customer acquisition channel, building highly localised run clubs across five global cities. 

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Linaco is Malaysia's largest coconut ingredient manufacturer, exporting coconut milk, cream, and ready-to-drink coconut water to more than forty countries under brands like Rasaku and Cowa. Operating production facilities across Batu Pahat, Bandar Enstek, and Kalimantan, the company supplies modern retail supermarkets, restaurants, and industrial food manufacturers. Last year, the group successfully crossed half a billion ringgit in annual revenue, achieving this massive scale without taking a single ringgit of outside capital in two decades.

Despite this financial milestone, the business is navigating the most violent period of coconut price volatility in living memory. With global benchmarks nearly tripling due to drought, pests, and international buying surges, Linaco is executing a massive RM400 million vertical integration strategy in Sabah to grow its own supply and protect its margins. Furthermore, after twenty years of strict self-funding, the business is officially preparing to enter an aggressive investment mode.

Executive Director Joe Ling joins us to discuss the global coconut trade, Linaco’s zero-waste manufacturing model, and the impact of ingredient adulteration on the wider category. We also explore the strategic shift toward owning their own plantations and why they are finally considering external capital to fund their next phase of growth.

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YonMing Group is a fully bootstrapped commercial vehicle aftermarket giant operating across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Hong Kong. The business model spans five distinct revenue streams, including supplying genuine parts for European heavyweights like Volvo, Scania, Mercedes-Benz, and Iveco. Additionally, the company operates dedicated workshops and 24-hour breakdown teams, sells used parts and whole trucks, and serves as the appointed Malaysian distributor for Chinese manufacturer Shacman.

Finance Director Kau Hau Jian joins us to unpack the hidden financial engine of parts distribution and the currency risks involved in a thin-margin industry. We also discuss the strategic impact of Chinese trucks disrupting a market traditionally dominated by European brands, the operational hurdle of digitising an industry built entirely on human relationships via the YM Super App, and how the impending electrification of commercial fleets will alter the economics of the parts business.

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A decade after pioneering equity crowdfunding (ECF) in Malaysia, why and how is pitchIN expanding beyond startup fundraising toward a complete private-to-public capital ecosystem? Kashminder Singh, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of pitchIN, joins Open For Business to discuss the platform’s evolution and ambitions as a digital funding hub serving mature, profitable enterprises alongside tech startups.

Kashminder shares how pitchIN navigated the post-pandemic "funding winter" by diversifying into corporate advisory services, initial exchange offerings (IEOs), and secondary market liquidity via PSTX 2.0. He also breaks down their upcoming peer-to-peer (P2P) debt financing rollout, strategic alignment with regulatory updates for LEAP and ACE market listings, and plans for executive succession and fresh capital raising.

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Supergulp is a bootstrapped functional beverage brand built on delivering scientifically recognised prebiotic fibres (specifically inulin and acacia gum) in a traditional soda format. Designed to address the high-carbohydrate, low-fibre diets prevalent across Southeast Asia, a single can delivers approximately half of an adult's recommended daily fibre intake. The strategic premise is straightforward: rather than forcing consumers to drastically overhaul their dietary habits, the company improves the nutritional profile of a product they are already drinking.

When founder Julian Koh last appeared on the show in October 2024, the brand was just months old and stocked in roughly 80 local outlets. Two years later, the business has aggressively scaled to over 1,000 retail locations across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, with Thailand slated as the next target. Operating entirely without institutional funding, the seven-figure business has roughly tripled its revenue year-on-year and successfully achieved profitability by its second year of operations.

Julian returns to unpack the intense operational realities of this rapid two-year expansion. We discuss the distinct go-to-market strategies required to penetrate three completely different Southeast Asian markets, and the constant financial tension between reinvesting capital for aggressive growth versus maintaining profitability. Finally, we examine the increasingly crowded functional beverage space, and what it takes to defend market share as an early mover.

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Let's Coopi Roasters is a fully bootstrapped micro-roastery that recently expanded into its own commercial shoplot, the Coffee Lounge. Generating between half a million and a million ringgit annually, the business model relies heavily on B2B operations, with 70 percent of revenue driven by wholesale contracts. The company successfully supplies custom espresso blends and single-origin beans to cafes spanning from Shah Alam and Petaling Jaya to Terengganu and Brunei, while retail sales and specialized coffee education make up the remaining 30 percent of the business.

Operating with a collaborative mindset, founder Hamizah Hamzah is navigating the operational reality of scaling a wholesale business without yet owning her own roasting machine. Beyond the immediate economics of coffee, she is leveraging her previous seven-year career as a behavioural therapist through a strategic partnership with EmployAble. Together, they are developing targeted vocational and job-readiness training for neurodivergent teenagers and adults, aiming to solve the industry's manpower challenges while building a genuinely inclusive enterprise.

Hamizah joins us to unpack the complex margins of micro-roasting and how a bootstrapped F&B business sustains itself across wholesale, retail, and training divisions. We also discuss the untapped commercial potential of Malaysian Liberica beans - a crop that makes up 87 percent of local production but has long been dismissed as mere filler.

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RujukRent is a tenant screening platform built to verify a prospective renter's identity, employment, and rental history within three days, entirely with their consent.

Currently operating as a fully bootstrapped, solo venture, the platform operates on a pay-per-use model for landlords while remaining free for property agents. Despite its early stage, the business has already secured a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Malaysian Institute of Estate Agents (MIEA) and is actively developing a commercial leasing version of its product.

Founder Dinesh Venkitesan, a lawyer by training, joins us to discuss the harsh realities of building a data business in a market that severely lacks data. We unpack the strict legal parameters of what can and cannot be checked, the financial mechanics of a pay-per-use model without subscriptions, and the path to scaling a solo bootstrapped startup. We also discuss the competitive landscape, and the difficult question of whether tenant screening actually eliminates discrimination, or simply gives bias a spreadsheet to hide behind.

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WAY Sauce is a Malaysian brand that makes all-natural Nyonya, ready-to-use cooking sauces and pastes , including rendang, satay, and pulut lemak, with zero preservatives, MSG, or artificial additives. Certified to rigorous BRC, IFS, and Halal standards, the family business operates across both its proprietary brand and white-label OEM manufacturing, exporting to markets like Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, the UK, and the United States. 

Despite this international footprint, the operational reality of producing all-natural products is incredibly challenging. Co-founder & COO Benson Tan joins us to discuss the intense financial squeeze of manufacturing FMCG goods, navigating the constant tension between volatile raw material costs and the hard price ceiling that retail consumers are actually willing to pay.

We also unpack securing shelf space in seven international markets, and the complexities of building products around Malaysia's most volatile ingredients. Benson also shares a blunt operational philosophy for F&B founders: know your exact numbers, and cut failing product lines fast before they drain the business.

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Asian Fried Chicken is an independent food and beverage business operating out of Seremban that offers a cleaner approach to comfort food. The menu features fresh, preservative-free, and MSG-free fried chicken paired with wholesome sides like broccoli quinoa and sweet potato fries. Having successfully survived its first 15 months - a critical milestone given that 60 percent of Malaysian F&B businesses close within their first year - the company is generating six-figure revenues and achieving intermittent profitability.

However, the operational reality of the business dictates that walk-in dining traffic alone is not enough to sustain growth. In response, founder Anandasingam Thuraisingam has executed a decisive pivot toward B2B catering, targeting corporate clients, schools, and hospitals. Following a successful partnership with the Negeri Sembilan Cricket Association, the business is doubling down on a specific niche: becoming Malaysia's premier sports, community, and event food partner. To fuel this transition and national ambition, the company is now actively seeking a strategic investor.

Anand joins us for a candid conversation about the financial and emotional realities of surviving the first year in the F&B industry. We unpack the ups and downs of cash flow management, the strategic necessity of moving away from a traditional retail dining room model, and whether fried chicken genuinely belongs in sports nutrition. 

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What does it mean for a business to contribute to nation building? For Merdeka, we speak to six Malaysian entrepreneurs working across urban development, STEM education, the creator economy, social enterprise, rural communities and financial inclusion, and explore how their businesses are helping shape a more prosperous Malaysia.

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PurelyB is a wellness brand selling traditional Malay herbal supplements such as Pegaga and Tiger Milk Mushroom, formulated with Universiti Malaya-derived extracts. The company is actively expanding its physical footprint globally, establishing a US storefront, exhibiting at the Natural Products Expo West, and securing a finalist spot for the American natural products industry's highly watched NEXTY award.

However, the business model looked completely different a decade ago. PurelyB originally launched as a venture-backed digital wellness portal, amassing 80,000 monthly visitors, acquiring a yoga community platform, and raising funds through an equity crowdfunding campaign designed for its own readers. Founder Raja Jesrina Arshad eventually executed a massive pivot, completely transforming the company from a digital media platform into a physical consumer packaged goods business with inventory, manufacturing, and a complex rainforest supply chain.

Jesrina joins us to discuss the financial and operational costs of completely changing a business model. We explore what happened to the platform's early shareholders after the pivot, the margins of manufacturing physical supplements, and whether a Malaysian herbal brand can genuinely compete in the US wellness aisle.

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In February 2026, after twenty-three years as part of a London-headquartered global network, M+C Saatchi Malaysia completed a management buyout. The agency is now one hundred percent Malaysian-owned, led, and staffed, officially operating as M+C Saatchi KARSA. While they retain the Saatchi name under a licensing agreement, the agency’s strategic direction, profit and loss, and future are now entirely in local hands. 

For founder Datin Sri Sharifah Menyalara Hussein (Lara Hussein), this independence is not a safety parachute, but a liberation - a chance to operate with the agility of a startup, backed by over two decades of industry experience. Alongside Chief Creative Officer Darren Lee, the leadership team is actively rebuilding the traditional integrated creative agency into a consultancy model. They are executing this pivot while battling fierce industry headwinds, including cautious clients, eroding margins, competitors undercutting prices, and the rising trend of in-housing.

Datin Sri Lara and Darren join us to unpack the exact financial and operational mechanics of their management buyout, where the profit margins genuinely sit within their new consultancy arm, and whether Malaysia's creative economy can survive an era where clients increasingly want to do the work themselves.

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Friends Craft Cooperative is Malaysia's largest community craft centre, operating a successful pottery and wood studio in Seksyen 13, Petaling Jaya. The fully bootstrapped business executes three distinct models at once: renting affordable studio access to hobbyists, training apprentices from low-income backgrounds through a sponsored programme, and manufacturing commercial furniture and restaurant tableware. Through this diversified approach, the cooperative generates between half a million and a million ringgit in revenue and has doubled its growth every year for the past three years.

Founder Teoh Jia Chern operates the business with a sharp critique of the local artisanal space. He argues that much of the industry survives on "pity purchases" - expensive objects sold to T20 consumers and corporate CSR budgets entirely on the strength of the "handmade" label, rather than the quality of the product itself. Because this model relies on elite sustainability and a high price floor, it can never scale or deliver genuine impact. Friends Craft Cooperative was built to be the exact opposite, focusing on high-quality, scalable manufacturing that stands on its own merit.

Chern joins us to unpack the operational realities of running a three-in-one craft business and how they manage to compete with manufacturing giants like IKEA and Taobao. We explore the cooperative's highly unusual democratic profit distribution, and why Chern insists on earning the exact same salary as his senior team, and his strategic plans to make himself entirely replaceable.

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The commercial space industry is moving away from exclusive government monopolies to an era where securing a rideshare slot on a commercial rocket is now accessible to private citizens. Ken Chan is proving exactly how accessible this new frontier is by building KENSAT, a 2U CubeSat, entirely from his home. Outfitted with an NVIDIA Jetson running a compressed language model for in-orbit computing, the satellite will soon launch on a SpaceX rideshare, marking the first time a Malaysian private individual has put a satellite into orbit.

While launch costs have significantly decreased, Ken quickly discovered that internal satellite components remain heavily priced for institutional buyers and suffer from months-long lead times. With zero prior hardware experience, he designed his own power and radio boards to bypass these bottlenecks. After successfully passing the rigorous vibration testing required for launch, these homemade components became the foundation of Swordholder Technologies, a solo venture built to disrupt the inaccessible satellite parts market.

Ken joins us to discuss the realities of building and launching a satellite on a bootstrapped budget. We explore his pivot from co-founding a massive crypto derivatives exchange to starting a zero-revenue aerospace hardware business, and unpack the real economics of commercial space rideshares, the process of qualifying homemade hardware for orbit, and how Swordholder Technologies plans to bring affordable infrastructure to the booming space economy.

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In 2012, three doctors opened a family clinic in Pasir Gudang with a simple but radical proposition: to provide good quality healthcare at prices ordinary working families could afford. Fourteen years later, that single clinic has rebranded as Mediwira and expanded into a formidable network of 22 outlets, comprising thirteen dental clinics, seven medical clinics, and two doctor-led medispas. It generates over RM20 million in annual revenue, and now the fully bootstrapped group has set a target to reach 100 outlets across Malaysia by 2030.

What makes Mediwira unusual is its ownership structure. Rather than relying on salaried employees, every single clinic is run by a doctor or dentist holding real equity as a partner. To reach their 100-clinic goal, the group must find nearly 80 more clinician-partners willing to buy-in amidst a national doctor shortage, all while standardising operations across dozens of outlets without destroying the unique local ownership that makes them successful.

Dr Mok joins us to unpack where the profit margins actually sit across their different business lines, why their dental arm now outnumbers medical almost two to one, and the immense capital and leadership required to hit their 2030 target.

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In 2023, after nine years studying and working in New York, Michael Ang came home to join his family's hospitality business. Today PHASE2 runs full-service restaurants, casual dining, café concepts, a central kitchen, food production, consumer packaged goods, and beverage development under one roof, anchored by fifteen authentic Taiwanese-style outlets across the Klang Valley generating around RM30 million in annual revenue, entirely self-funded.

MJ will tell you the food is almost the easy part. What's hard is everything underneath it: the operational discipline, supply chains, culture, and technology that determine whether a restaurant group can scale. He joins us to unpack why menus can be copied but operating excellence can't, and what a Southeast Asian expansion and eventual IPO ambitions could look like over the next five years.

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It is one of the most common paradoxes in business: an entrepreneur builds a company from scratch, grows it to multi-million-dollar revenues, and ends up trapped inside the day-to-day machine they created. They work through grueling hours, put out operational fires, and realise that scaling up has also scaled their stress.

Chan Boon Yong and Lau Huoi Seong, co-founders of The Better Business School, join BFM’s Open For Business to discuss how their executive education platform helps operators transition into strategic leaders running profitable, purposeful assets.

They break down their core curriculum, combining a "Courageous Leadership" mindset shift with the four pillars of the Scaling Up framework (People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash), to explain how neuroplasticity, Asian-centric case studies, and peer forum support prevent founders from defaulting back to old habits once training ends.

Download The Better Business School 2025 Insights report for full key takeaways, and apply for their upcoming executive cohort running October 12 to 16.

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If you've ever tossed out a bottle of used cooking oil without a second thought, you've handed away a rapidly appreciating commodity. The aviation industry is racing to decarbonise, and the feedstock for that shift is sitting in home kitchens and restaurant fryers across the region.

Vinesh Sinha has spent sixteen years building the infrastructure to capture it. Founded in 2010, FatHopes Energy is now Malaysia's leading used cooking oil collector and distributor with its own digital traceability system. But the biggest change this year is an estimated US$500 million Sustainable Aviation Fuel refinery in Port Klang.

Vinesh joins us to unpack where the refinery stands after an independent feasibility study, the challenges and opportunities ahead, and how volatile fuel prices are shaping the economics of clean fuel at scale.

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Unicorn insurtech Bolttech has raised over US$600 million to build its global B2B2C insurance distribution platform, which now processes US$85 billion in quoted annual premiums and operates across 39 markets.

Rob Schimek, Co-Founder and Group CEO of Bolttech, joins BFM’s Open For Business to discuss his transition from corporate leadership at AIG to pioneering embedded protection technology.

He explains how Bolttech's orchestration layer enables telecom partners, retailers, and device makers to offer tailored protection products, details the capital-intensive infrastructure required to scale across four continents, and outlines the company's financial transition toward sustained EBITDA profitability and self-funded growth.

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Founded twelve years ago, Rhymba Hills has steadily grown into a highly decorated, internationally recognised premium botanical infusion brand. The fully bootstrapped business has secured the prestigious Great Taste Award in the UK and a gourmet award in Paris, while successfully exporting to highly competitive markets including London, Japan, and Dubai. The company has also been appointed as a Strategic Partner for Visit Malaysia Year 2026 and currently supplies premium raw materials to one of the largest tea companies in the country.

Despite the string of global achievements, the operational reality of the business tells a story of immense entrepreneurial endurance. Rhymba Hills is profitable and successfully holds premium retail shelf space, yet after more than a decade of grinding through gruelling two-year sales cycles and overcoming constant rejection, the business still generates under a million ringgit in annual revenue. Founder Ciinndey Wong has navigated the long-steeped growth entirely on her own terms, fighting through self-doubt and the constant pressure of making payroll to keep her vision alive.

Ciinndey joins us for an unusually candid conversation about the harsh realities of slow business growth and what it genuinely costs to survive a twelve-year entrepreneurial journey. We explore the mental fortitude required to keep going when the financial scale does not immediately match the global accolades, as well as the challenges of acquiring customers in a highly traditional beverage market. We also unpack her upcoming export push into Europe and Hong Kong and discuss what the ultimate endgame looks like for a founder who refuses to quit.

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Grub by Ahong & Friends is a wildly popular, no-frills steakhouse tucked away in a shophouse behind Happy Mansion in Section 17, Petaling Jaya. Operating with a partially self-service model, and limited seating that strictly demands advance booking, the restaurant serves up premium cuts ranging from New Zealand striploin and Wagyu to Beef Wellington. The core menu is intentionally limited, supplemented by a rotating set of specials driven entirely by what Ahong feels inspired to cook.

Funded by family and friends, the business generates six-figure revenue and has achieved early-stage profitability. However, the operational reality of running an independent restaurant is intensely demanding. Founder Ahong controls almost every single detail of the business himself, to the point where simply keeping the doors open is considered his biggest milestone of the past year. 

The fiercely outspoken Ahong talks to us about the industry's toughest issues, offering sharp critiques on the hidden costs of underpriced food, the damage influencers can inflict on genuine hospitality, and the urgent need to build sustainable career paths for culinary professionals.

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If you sell products in a physical supermarket, decades of established tracking by companies like Nielsen ensure you know exactly how much product moved, your market share, and what your competitors charged. But in the Southeast Asian e-commerce sector, a market that generated US$157 billion in gross merchandise value last year, that clarity completely vanishes. With product listings constantly changing, sellers bundling items into single SKUs, and categories named differently across six countries and six languages, the online market lacks a single source of truth.

After spending a decade navigating this, Simon Torring partnered with former McKinsey advisor Sarabjit Singh to build a solution. Founded in 2022, their data company Cube successfully estimates online sales down to the individual SKU level. Today, the platform serves over 20 enterprise clients, including L'Oréal and IKEA, and has grown to a team of more than 70 staff. Following a US$3.7 million Series A funding round in April 2026 led by Betatron Venture Group, the company is now preparing to push its analytics into North Asia and Latin America.

Simon joins us to discuss the harsh realities of building a data business in a highly fragmented market that actively resists being measured. We explore the economics of running an enterprise subscription model, the early failures while finding product-market fit, the integration of AI, and their ultimate endgame as a global data company.

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Malaysia is ageing faster than almost any other country in Asia, yet the infrastructure to support this demographic shift barely exists. Addressing this massive gap is Seniora, a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure integrated elder care operation. 

Spanning across centres in Taiping, Penang, and Johor Bahru, the business offers a comprehensive suite of services including elder day care, home nursing, physiotherapy, and active ageing programmes. Crucially, every member of their care team is certified in Montessori dementia care, ensuring a highly specialised approach to cognitive wellness.

Having recently opened two new centres, secured a Malaysian distributorship for cutting-edge cognitive wellness technology, and launched a Senior Learning Community, the business is scaling aggressively. 

Founder Chew Siew Mei joins us to discuss the realities of building an elder care operation in a market that does not yet fully believe it needs one. We unpack the complexities of running day care centres, the uphill battle to change how local families think about ageing, and what it genuinely takes to scale trust in such a sensitive industry.

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Hotels face a persistent shortage of marketing talent who truly understand their operations, while generalist agencies often fail to grasp the precise nuances of hospitality. Having spent over two decades collectively inside premium and luxury hotel brands, Lai Yen Yee, Melissa Mohan, and Juliana Yong saw this gap firsthand. In 2018, Yen founded Purple Giant to provide the industry with marketing strategies that not only look impressive but are actually executable on the ground.

Today, the proudly female-led boutique agency serves major hospitality and lifestyle brands across Malaysia, including Shangri-La Rasa Ria, and Sheraton Petaling Jaya. Delivering everything from public relations to content production and campaign management, Purple Giant has grown into a bootstrapped, early seven-figure business. The agency achieved this scale entirely through referrals and word of mouth, successfully securing highly coveted recurring retainers from premium hotel properties.

Yen and Melissa join us to discuss the commercial realities of running an insider agency in a sector that rarely trusts outsiders. We break down the operational tension between founder-led quality and scalable delivery, and examine why the hardest problem in growing a successful boutique agency is not acquiring new clients, but figuring out how founders can finally let go.

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Cloud Space is a Malaysian cloud and artificial intelligence transformation company that delivers cloud migration, AI deployment, cybersecurity, and managed services. Despite widespread industry hype, its co-founders identified a critical flaw in the market: 80 percent of local businesses remain stuck in the AI pilot phase. Most organisations understand the need for these technologies but consistently fail at execution due to unprepared personnel and poor change management. Cloud Space focuses on the people and processes required to actually solve this last mile of operational transformation.

In just three years, the company has scaled to over 50 professionals and nearly RM30 million in annual revenue, experiencing a 130 percent year on year growth trajectory. This momentum earned them two consecutive Google Cloud Partner of the Year awards and recently culminated in a massive RM18 million strategic investment from Gamuda. 

Two of its six co-founders, Aaron Chong and Kishan Singh join us to discuss the intense reality of managing such rapid expansion from the inside. They unpack the operational challenges of aggressive hiring, why certain client projects inevitably fail, the financial mechanics driving their margins, and what the Gamuda deal unlocks for their regional expansion.

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Wahine Capital was built around a persistent problem within the financial ecosystem. Women in Malaysia outlive men and are disproportionately exposed to financial vulnerability during divorce, illness, and widowhood. At the exact moment they most need access to their family's financial information, they very often cannot get it. To solve this, the fintech company built W Vault, a platform that successfully earned recognition at the UN Women's Empowerment Principles Awards and was shortlisted by the Securities Commission's fintech accelerator.

Despite these notable achievements, Wahine Capital is officially closing down. 

Co-founder Rejina Rahim joins us to unpack exactly what happened and the timeline of when she finally knew the business could not continue. We discuss the tangible impact the closure has on its existing users, what she is proudest of, and the crucial operational lessons she would apply differently. 

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According to a 2025 report, ransomware is present in 88 percent of all data breaches affecting small-to-medium enterprises, making them the primary targets rather than just collateral damage. Despite the severe financial and emotional toll these attacks take on small companies and non-profits, the cyber security industry remains largely tailored for massive corporations, creating a severe state of "cyber inequity". Recognising this massive gap, Gaurav Keerthi left a two-decade career at the very top of Singapore's national cyber security and defence infrastructure to protect these highly vulnerable underdogs.

Gaurav founded Strongkeep to become the "IKEA of cyber security," abandoning complex, over-engineered bespoke solutions in favour of highly accessible, affordable protection. By bundling four essential pillars - anti-malware, phishing protection, credential management, and secure server configurations - the platform dramatically raises the security baseline for companies without dedicated IT teams. Priced at just $39 a month, the platform utilises intelligent automation to allow non-technical staff to pay, deploy, and be completely protected within just seven minutes.

Rather than relying on massive marketing budgets, Strongkeep has built a strategic distribution moat by partnering with telecommunications companies, banks, and managed service providers who bundle the protection into their existing offerings. Gaurav joins us to discuss building a rapidly scaling cyber security startup and how they keep customer acquisition costs lean. We also explore the company's global expansion plans, their ongoing seed extension round, and their ambitious research into developing an artificial intelligence-powered virtual Chief Information Security Officer for small businesses.

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When you eat a croissant from a Malaysian bakery chain or a mousse cake from a hotel buffet, there is a strong chance the chocolate coating was made in Shah Alam. Founded in 2008 by Ng Boon Yeap and Ir. Dr. Ng Yuit Ju, Le Bourne Sdn Bhd is one of Malaysia's leading manufacturers of industrial chocolate. Rather than competing for consumer attention on retail shelves, the company operates as the crucial hidden ingredient behind the scenes, supplying premium couverture and compound chocolates to food manufacturers, bakery chains, pastry schools, and FMCG brands.

Operating heavily in the B2B space, Le Bourne prioritises strict quality control in a market often flooded with cheap compound alternatives. This commitment is supported by a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility equipped with an in-house laboratory that monitors every batch. This operational excellence has allowed Le Bourne to successfully export 80 percent of its production to over 20 countries across Asia.

Boon Yeap joins us to discuss the technical and commercial divide between couverture and compound chocolate and why it matters so much to food manufacturers. We explore the harsh economics of industrial manufacturing amid volatile global cocoa prices, the strategic thinking behind their recent consumer-facing pivot, and how Le Bourne plans to expand its global footprint over the next five years.

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What started in 2005 as a developer training center called iTrain has evolved into 1337 Ventures, one of Malaysia's key players in the startup business and investing ecosystem. Over twenty years, Founder and CEO Bikesh Lakhmichand has backed startups and founders, guiding them through the "Valley of Death."

However, with early-stage venture capital tightening across Southeast Asia, 1337 Ventures is shifting its playbook. Bikesh joins BFM’s Open for Business to discuss why the firm is expanding its focus toward traditional small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-market companies, helping them professionalise board structures, clean up financial governance, and prepare for institutional capital or public listings

Bikesh also shares his pragmatic framework for vetting AI startups, the mechanics of 5x–10x founder buyouts as an alternative exit path, 1337's rollout of boutique private equity and multi-strategy funds, and plans to bridge Indian deep-tech solutions into Southeast Asia.

We Discuss

The 20-Year Evolution: Moving from training 2007 "appreneurs" to establishing Malaysia's first structured pre-accelerators and equity crowdfunding platforms.

The "AI Litmus Test": Why AI is a horizontal enabler rather than a vertical, and why shallow wrappers are getting crushed by frontier models.

The "No-AI" Pitch Rule: If removing every instance of "AI" from a pitch deck collapses the core value proposition, the startup is a feature, not a defensible business.

Pivot to Non-Tech SMEs: Why traditional mid-market companies with real earnings are the new priority in investing.

The Multi-Strategy Playbook: Building a full-spectrum fund spanning early-stage equity, venture debt, and boutique private equity.

Get Paid First: Why a founder’s absolute first priority is securing paying customers before ever calling an investor.

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When Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin last appeared on the show in March 2024, MADCash was focused on building an alternative credit score for women marginalised by traditional banking through zero-interest microloans. Since then, the platform has scaled massively, disbursing over RM4 million to more than 1,500 female entrepreneurs across Malaysia, Singapore, and Tajikistan. This tangible impact recently earned them major international acclaim, winning the Catapult Inclusion Southeast Asia 2025 prize and becoming the very first Malaysian company to win the prestigious EFICA award in Dubai by live audience vote.

Despite this global recognition and rapid growth, MADCash is undergoing a profound structural evolution. Realising that their foundational principle of purely zero-interest funding is unsustainable beyond project-to-project lending, the team is boldly shifting to Murabahah financing. By implementing this Shariah-compliant, cost-plus model, the platform can generate its own revenue from lending activities, drastically reducing its dependence on corporate social responsibility funds and unpredictable charity grants.

With current revenue hitting RM1.2 million and growing at 139 percent year on year, the company is targeting break-even this year and full profitability by 2027. As MADCash seeks to raise RM10 million in Murabahah funds to reach 2,000 more women, Nuraizah returns to the studio to unpack the deep philosophical and operational realities of evolving a model built on giving money away into one that must financially sustain itself.

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What began as a tool to help kindergartens, tuition centers, and music academies digitise their paperwork has evolved into an operating platform for 3,000 learning centers across Southeast Asia. Today, AOne manages everything from scheduling and attendance tracking to automated tuition billing.

Founder and CEO Dr. Darren Gouk returns to BFM’s Open for Business as AOne attempts to raise up to RM6 million at a pre-money valuation of RM20 million via equity crowdfunding (ECF) campaign on pitchIN.

He addresses the company's path to profitability, its RM3.5 million break-even target, and the stickiness of this platform.

Darren also details how AOne is deploying fresh capital into predictive agent AI, unlocking direct-to-consumer marketplace monetisation for parents, and positioning the business for an eventual M&A exit with global EdTech conglomerates.

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If you have ever made a glass of rose syrup at home in Malaysia, there is a strong chance the bottle featured a slanting yellow label with a rose flower on it. That iconic bottle comes from Teluk Intan, Perak, produced by Ameen Products. Founded in 1982 by Hj Amanulla Khan, the company was born out of a stark realisation that there were no Muslim-owned syrup producers in Malaysia. Starting from his home to serve neighbours, he steadily expanded the operation to supply wholesalers, retailers, and eventually major supermarkets across Peninsular Malaysia.

Today, Ameen Products is run by his son Mohammed Irfan Amanulla Khan, and operates at a massive scale, supplying major food and beverage chains like Chatime, Kenny Rogers, The Chicken Rice Shop, and Big Apple. The business has also established a robust international footprint, exporting to markets including Singapore, Fiji, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. 

Irfan joins us to discuss the commercial realities of carrying his father's business across four decades. We break down the complex economics of Malaysian cordial manufacturing, explore the strategic push into the functional beverage market with their new Nutrasip line, and reveal the ambitious plans for a brand new manufacturing facility that will power the next forty years of Ameen Products.

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What began as decades of plant genetics and biotechnology research at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has evolved into Nomatech, an agricultural spin-off commercialising clinically validated functional rice varieties like Primera Red Rice. Today, the company manages the entire supply chain, from breeding the seeds and working with contract farmers all the way to store shelves. 

However, moving from academic research grants to industrial scale presents a severe operational bottleneck: transitioning from linear, organic growth (120 metric tons annually) to exponential commercial output (1,000+ metric tons) requires significant growth capital.

Managing Director and Founder Emeritus Professor Wickineswari Ratnam joins BFM’s Open for Business to discuss Nomatech’s current equity crowdfunding (ECF) campaign on pitchIN, seeking RM1.5 million to RM2 million at a pre-money valuation of RM7.7 million.

She addresses investor concerns around high debt gearing and details her strategy to achieve a 12-fold revenue increase to RM16 million by 2029. She also discusses securing international export permits, licensing functional IP for nutraceuticals and gut-health formulations, and her long-term path toward a public stock exchange listing.

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Can a Malaysian indie game studio go head-to-head with the world’s biggest gaming companies? Metronomik founder Wan Hazmer believes Malaysia has the talent but turning that talent into a global business is the real challenge.

From building No Straight Roads to creating a studio capable of producing international hits, Hazmer shares the realities of running a game company like the cost of development, finding global audiences, attracting creative talent, and why owning original IP matters in the gaming industry.

We discuss:

Why building a game studio is harder than making a game.

How Metronomik competes in a crowded global gaming market.

The challenges of funding and monetising original game IPs in Malaysia.

Why Malaysia has the talent and resources to become a gaming hub.

What it takes to build a sustainable indie studio.

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In 2018, Hendra Wardi won the MDEC IP Creators Challenge with a highly original concept: a comedy about two teenage skeletons working in a zombie grocery store surrounded by classic Southeast Asian ghosts. It took eight years of persistence to bring that idea to life. In March 2026, Kisah Bawah Tanah finally premiered on Astro Prima, making history as Malaysia's first adult animated series. With a feature film in early discussion, the unmistakably Malaysian show is now expanding its reach into Indonesia and Thailand.

The IP found its creative home at Hendra's Bawah Tanah Sdn Bhd, but it required the operational muscle of Edmund Chan's Animasia Studio to become a reality. Animasia brings 21 years of industry experience, having evolved from selling children's books to licensing homegrown animation to Disney Channel Asia and producing content for heavyweights like A24 Films and Amazon. Together, the two founders navigated a highly challenging landscape marked by severe funding gaps, a small domestic market, and significant talent scarcity to finally get the show on the air.

Hendra and Edmund join us to discuss the financial and creative realities of building a Malaysian animation IP from scratch. They outline the sheer endurance required to survive an eight-year development cycle and unpack the business mechanics behind their regional expansion strategy. They also address the massive disruption of artificial intelligence within the creative sector and how Animasia's new AI hybrid production joint venture, RawrAsia Studio, aims to adapt to the future of the global animation industry.

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What began in 2012 as an enterprise PC broker has evolved into one of Southeast Asia’s largest re-commerce operators, processing over half a million pre-owned devices annually across Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Founder and CEO Julius Lim joins BFM’s Open for Business to unpack how CompAsia built a vertically integrated ecosystem that generated RM180 million in revenue and nearly RM20 million in profit after tax last year.

He details the operational shift from pure-play e-commerce to an aggressive 85-store physical retail footprint, explaining how brick-and-mortar touchpoints serve as both a customer acquisition channel and a direct device-sourcing engine.

Julius also breaks down the mechanics of their high-margin Renew and Go program, his approach to managing consumer credit risk, and why debt capacity is driving their planned RM400 million to RM500 million Main Market IPO by 2027.

We Discuss:

The Evolution from Enterprise PCs to Smartphones: Why the initial B2B computer brokerage model shifted in 2017 to capture higher-velocity, higher-value consumer smartphone demand.

Overcoming the Trust Deficit: Professionalising secondhand trade-ins through proprietary white-label diagnostic software, automated AI grading, and certified data wiping.

The Offline Retail Paradox: Why CompAsia aggressively expanded from 7 to 85 physical stores to solve sourcing bottlenecks and lower customer acquisition costs.

The Renew and Go Profit Engine: Structuring a 36-month installment and 12-month upgrade cycle to target underbanked consumers without credit cards.

The 2027 Main Market IPO Rationale: Why going public is essential to unlocking the debt and equity capital required to fund inventory and scale the program to 1 million subscribers.

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What began with a single stand-up comedy show at Zouk KL’s Velvet Underground in 2009 has expanded into a regional live entertainment force, selling over 500,000 tickets, hosting 350 global talents, and touring across 30 cities.

Co-Founder and CEO Rizal Kamal joins BFM’s Open for Business to unpack LOL Asia’s 17-year journey, the brutal economics of the live events trade, and why he’s pushing past the transactional promoter trap to build a scalable, asset-owning intellectual property (IP) engine.

He breaks down how the company is capitalizing on shifting post-pandemic consumer behaviors, where traditional clubbing and alcohol consumption are in decline, and audiences demand high-value, sober live experiences like their new wellness concept, Thrive Play. 

Rizal also details his asset-light regional expansion across Australia and Southeast Asia, how AI acts as a "genius partner" for rapid event prototyping, and why he is working with a 60-association coalition to abolish Malaysia's British era entertainment tax.

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For years, Secondlifeasia was recognized as a hardware-heavy device repair business. But as the company sets out to raise RM5 million at a near-RM38 million valuation, it is undergoing a high-stakes operational shift.

Squeezed by a structural hardware margin trap, driven by Apple’s iron grip on parts pricing and surging component costs, the company is facing the decline of repair culture, as consumers choose instant trade-ins over physical part replacements.

The answer to this? Software.

Secondlifeasia claims it can transform into a scalable ecosystem for financed, pre-loved devices.

Co-Founder and CEO Jerome Teh joins Open for Business to defend their new trajectory. We dive into the assumptions underpinning their financial projections and dissect their signature "switch-off deterrent", a proprietary, remote device-locking technology designed to mitigate an $11 billion global fraud problem and turn high-risk pre-loved electronics into safe, high-yield financial assets for risk-averse financiers. 

Finally, we question the true execution risk of their pivot and regional playbook as they attempt to scale across the highly fragmented consumer markets of Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

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Following a RM96 million acquisition by German-listed DDB, Jon Woon, Founder and CEO of Infinium Robotics, unpacks what’s next for the indoor autonomous drone space.

We discuss how the company successfully pivoted from an economically unviable restaurant food-delivery experiment into a logistics play, the development of patent-pending indoor navigation software that flies entirely without GPS signals, and how a single autonomous drone can audit up to 20,000 pallet locations over a single weekend.

Jon also shares how Infinium actively de-risked its business from low-cost Chinese hardware competition by transforming into a drone-agnostic system integrator, leveraging a resilient 70% OPEX rental revenue model to seamlessly scale across Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia.

Finally, we explore the next frontier of logistics through Physical AI and digital twin technology, explaining why a massive global automation gap, where 90% of warehouses still rely on manual stock-taking, presents a massive runway for their upcoming expansion into Europe and North America.

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Open your brand's Instagram and honestly ask if you would follow the account if you did not work there. Most corporate social media pages function like boring bulletin boards, treating creators merely as distribution channels with audiences attached. Recognising this flaw after a decade leading Gushcloud Malaysia, Wan Hou Yin left to launch empwr in January 2026 alongside a former colleague and one of Malaysia's most recognisable digital talents.

That talent is Mohamad Sofian Abdullah, better known as Sofyank. Famous for his VFX collaborations with Hollywood stars and winning Zach King's Ultimate VFX Challenge, Sofyank is not just a client on the agency roster — he is a co-founder. This distinction drives empwr's entire business thesis. By treating creators as genuine creative partners, the agency leverages their cultural instincts to produce content audiences actually want to watch. This approach rapidly built a bootstrapped, seven-figure business that reached profitability in just three months, highlighted by a massive Dutch Lady livestream with Khairul Aming that generated RM400,000 in sales.

Hou Yin and Sofian join us to discuss the fundamental difference between a traditional influencer campaign and a genuine creator collaboration. We examine the commercial realities of running their fast-growing agency, what it actually changes when you bring a top-tier digital creator into the boardroom, and whether the traditional advertising industry is finally ready to let go of outdated marketing strategies.

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In 2008, Alann Tan returned from New Zealand with his degree but no business plan, driven home by his father's cancer diagnosis. To survive, he and his brother opened a humble market stall selling pineapple tarts and Chinese New Year kuih. Despite a RM500,000 early loss that nearly wiped them out, that small survival mechanism quietly laid the foundation for what is now a sophisticated, multi-brand wellness and gifting empire.

Today, JYY Group is a fully bootstrapped, profitable enterprise generating tens of millions in annual revenue across Malaysia. The portfolio is strategically split across three distinct pillars: Jin Ye Ye for festive hampers, JYNNS for modern daily wellness, and the heritage bird's nest brand Lo Hong Ka. Acquiring Lo Hong Ka and its manufacturing plant in 2022 allowed the group to take full control of its production, fueling an expansion to over 30 retail outlets and preparing the company for significant capital expenditure to build a new industrial park and regional headquarters.

The group's ultimate ambition is to elevate Malaysian natural assets onto the global stage, specifically aiming to do for local Trigona honey what New Zealand did for Manuka. This vision recently materialised with the launch of the MY Treasure flagship at KLIA2, positioning curated Malaysian products as premium gifts for international travellers. Alann joins us to discuss the financial mechanics of running a multi-brand retail ecosystem, the strategic value of owning your own manufacturing, and what it truly takes to build a premium positioning for an underdog ingredient.

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Traditional hotels often force guests to pay for luxury features they simply do not use. Recognising this gap, Benny Ong and his co-founders launched KiN Hotel Group in 2023. Coming from diverse backgrounds in technology, marketing, and real estate, they viewed their complete lack of hospitality experience as a massive competitive advantage. By treating operations as a blank canvas and avoiding legacy corporate structures, they implemented a philosophy of "value engineering” - stripping away expensive grand lobbies and converting underutilised rooms into practical, modern spaces like modular mini-gyms.

This lean, technology-driven approach quickly proved highly successful. Their first proof of concept in Vietnam saw average room rates jump from $45 USD to over $100 USD per night while maintaining an impressive 90 percent occupancy rate. Rather than buying buildings or relying heavily on traditional management contracts, KiN Hotel Group operates an asset-light model focused on long-term leases and rapid refurbishments. By dealing directly with vendors, they can completely turn over a property in just eight weeks, allowing them to target a return on equity within three to four years.

Benny joins us to discuss the operational realities of scaling an independent hotel brand with a target of adding up to 2,000 rooms annually. They explore the strategic thinking behind their recent RM19.8 million, 20-year lease for Kuala Lumpur's Maya Hotel, how they plan to heavily integrate artificial intelligence to offset rising labour costs, and their ambitious roadmap toward a potential public listing by 2030 as they expand aggressively across Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and China.

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Traditional cross-border payments are plagued by a severe lack of predictability. Relying on an outdated correspondent banking network and the SWIFT system, global money transfers are often slow and leave customers waiting without any clarity on when their funds will arrive. Raj Kamal, an executive with two decades of experience in the payments industry, realised the core issue was a lack of universal regulation. In 2022, he founded TransFi, betting that fiat-pegged stablecoins could provide instant settlement without the need for trusted counterparties, effectively bypassing the cumbersome legacy system entirely.

Focusing heavily on emerging markets, TransFi allows customers to transact using familiar local payment methods like DuitNow. Behind the scenes, the platform seamlessly converts the local currency into stablecoins to move the value across borders, before instantly paying it out in the recipient's local currency. This ensures a faster, highly predictable experience where the end-user never actually has to handle cryptocurrency. To manage this safely at scale, the company heavily integrates AI for rigorous global compliance checks, real-time transaction reconciliation, and automated customer service capabilities.

Serving institutions, large remittance companies, and e-commerce merchants, TransFi operates at a cost up to 50 percent lower than traditional alternatives. This operational efficiency has driven massive growth, leading to a $19.2 million Series A funding round led by Turing Financial Group in March 2026. Having already processed over $1 billion in volume with 16 times revenue growth since their seed round, Raj joins us to discuss his strategy for hitting $5 billion in transaction volume this fiscal year and why he believes stablecoins will completely reshape the global payments industry by 2030.

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In April 2019, Muhammad Hamizan Zaidi opened Affogato, a popular coffee and ice cream dessert cafe in Kuching. Capitalising on a loyal community following, the concept soon expanded into a second lot right next door to become Oregano by Affogato, a pasta-forward restaurant blending Sarawakian ingredients with Italian fusion. Together, these ventures built the foundation of a seven-figure multi-brand F&B business.

Encouraged by his success in Sarawak, Mizan made the bold decision to expand into Petaling Jaya. However, the operational realities of West Malaysia proved vastly different from his home base. Facing the stark contrasts and intense pressures of running an F&B outlet in Kuala Lumpur compared to Kuching, the Petaling Jaya expansion struggled. To rescue the business, Mizan successfully secured capital from new investors, executing a major strategic pivot that saw the PJ location completely rebrand from Oregano into Warung Jakarta.

Mizan joins us to discuss the realities of expanding an independent F&B brand across the South China Sea. We explore the distinct differences in consumer behaviour and operational demands between the Kuching and KL markets. He also shares the heavy emotional responsibility of managing a team through a business rescue, and why his ultimate goal for his portfolio is building deep, sustainable artisan character rather than chasing aggressive scale.

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While the rest of Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem was chasing consumer-driven "unicorn" narratives and burning cash on a race for user growth at all costs, Indelible Ventures took a completely different path. Since its launch, this early-stage venture capital firm has avoided consumer hype to bet heavily on B2B enterprise software.

Managing Partner Kevin Brockland joins us to explain why he avoids consumer tech and how the B2B landscape is reaching a critical turning point. He also discusses why a growing number of Malaysian founders are choosing to completely bootstrap using AI tools rather than seek dilutive venture funding, why the fundraising environment for VCs is the worst it’s been in a decade, and how early-stage capital is migrating away from overrated markets toward overlooked regions like the Philippines and Japan.

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Most fashion businesses begin with a gap in the market. Kayla Batik Design began with a mother who couldn't find colourful batik clothing for her one-year-old daughter. So she decided to make it herself.

What started as designing a single dress for her toddler, has become a fully bootstrapped, profitable modern batik brand stocked in boutiques and department stores across Malaysia and as far as George Town, Penang.

Kayla Batik Design makes contemporary batik clothing and lifestyle accessories for all ages: from baby bibs and kimonos to adult shirts and dresses, scarves, bags, and coasters. All designed by founder Jaime Sya, made by local tailors, using hand-stamped cotton batik. 

Jaime joins us to talk about what it takes to build a design-led brand when you're learning as you go — the inventory gambles, the quality control nightmares, and why she believes consistency and customer listening are the only strategy that actually works.

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Matcha took a decade to go from Japanese tea ceremony to global café staple. Shivaani Suppiah believes pandan, that fragrant green leaf that flavours everything from kaya to nasi lemak across Southeast Asia, is ready for the same journey. Her target market: India. Her base: Pondicherry, a former French colony on the southeastern coast, chosen specifically for its mix of locals, international travellers, and food-curious entrepreneurs. 

It's Pandan Only launched in mid-2025 and has already sold out every batch it has produced, with 60 to 76 percent product margins. The flagship product is a fully vegan Pandan Coconut Spread or kaya, currently supplied by Malaysian bakery VickedGood while Shivaani sets up her own commercial kitchen in Pondicherry. She walks into cafés with samples. She runs tasting events. And she is raising her first seed round of approximately RM42,000 to buy a 125-litre commercial machine and scale production to meet the waitlist already forming.

Shivaani joins us to talk about what it actually takes to introduce a completely unknown flavour to a new country from scratch — the on-the-ground hustle, the margins behind a premium artisan product, and the bigger argument that Malaysia has ingredients the world has not yet discovered.

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When Mathew Howe was last on Open For Business in July 2024, Grobrix had just announced its partnership with Green City Growers in Boston and was projecting 500% quarterly revenue growth from its Farming-as-a-Service subscription model. The question then was whether a banker-turned-urban-farmer with a patented Lego-inspired green wall system could build a serious commercial business across Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and North America.

Two years on, the answer is coming into focus.

Grobrix now manages over 70 commercial farming locations across Singapore, KL, and Boston. Clients include CBRE, LinkedIn, and W Hotels. Annual recurring revenue has crossed $1 million. And the company is rolling out Grobrix 2.0: an IoT and cloud-connected version of the wall that allows remote monitoring and control of each farm from anywhere in the world.

But the story Mathew most wants to tell is not about technology. It is about what happens when a corporate office grows its own food, and why he believes urban farming is the most underrated tool in the corporate wellness playbook.

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Most professional networking events fail because they focus on collecting business cards rather than building genuine connections. Jude Ashvin realised this after experiencing a highly curated after-work social event in Belgium. Drawing on his background managing the business and logistics for the Malaysian live band Rhythm Nation, he decided to bring this refined approach home to Kuala Lumpur to tackle the growing epidemic of professional loneliness.

Launched in January 2025, Just After Work is a networking platform designed specifically for the evening post-work window. Instead of sterile hotel ballrooms, the platform hosts vetted attendees at carefully selected venues to ensure high-quality interactions. 

Jude talks to us about how Just After Work successfully vets and matches attendees to create a high-trust environment, the rollout of recurring concepts like Padel & Connect and The Women's Circle, and their upcoming regional expansion into Jakarta and Singapore ahead of a major networking festival in 2027.

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Hagen Chen originally built a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure F&B group starting with Toast Maker, a healthy sandwich and coffee concept for busy professionals. However, his latest venture marks a significant pivot. Stepping away from health-focused cafe fare, Hagen recently launched Jiran-jiran, a brand new community-centric concept dedicated to serving traditional Malaysian nasi lemak.

What makes Jiran-jiran particularly unique is how it was created. Hagen set himself an intense operational challenge to conceptualise, build, and launch the entire brand from scratch in exactly 60 days. This rapid execution ties directly into his core business thesis. He argues that a food brand's true competition is not the similar shop down the street, but the entire timeframe of a person's hunger. If a business fails to satisfy a hidden need within that specific window, they lose the customer completely.

Hagen joins us to discuss the intense reality of successfully launching a restaurant concept in under two months, the operational mechanics of running a central kitchen to support a multi-brand group, and what healthy food brands often get wrong about the local market.

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Most cafes do not survive ten years, and those that do typically rely on relentless expansion to stay afloat. Naj & Belle reached this rare milestone by doing the exact opposite. Founded in 2015 by Annabelle Liau and Datuk Najib Hamid of The Serai Group, the premium dessert and dining cafe launched in Subang with a foundation built on a deep family passion for hospitality. Famous for introducing Malaysia's first Watermelon Cake, the brand quickly expanded to a second outlet in Bangsar and began aggressively pushing toward a third, fourth, and eventually fifth location.

That is when Bryan Chen, armed with a culinary background and years of watching the founders build the brand, made a critical intervention. Recognising the operational strain of rapid scaling, he made the difficult call to halt expansion, close underperforming locations, and completely overhaul their internal systems. By choosing to scale back and tighten their backend operations, the team prioritised business health over top-line growth. Today, Naj & Belle stands as a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure, family-run enterprise operating two highly sustainable outlets.

Second-generation operators and Directors Bryan and Leora Chen talk to us about what it actually costs to manage premium food margins and labour, why they deliberately walked away from a multi-outlet expansion strategy, and their strategic plans for the next decade, which include a growing events arm, halal certification, and the dream of opening in Penang.

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Across Malaysia and Southeast Asia, thousands of profitable businesses are quietly approaching a major crisis. Their founders are entering their sixties and seventies, and the next generation either does not want to take over or is simply not ready to lead. This succession gap leaves many highly successful enterprises in a vulnerable position, threatening businesses that took decades of hard work to build.

GenCap Partners was established to step directly into this void. Founded in August 2024, the Singapore and Malaysia-based acquisition firm targets the lower mid-market, focusing on businesses generating RM10 million to RM50 million in revenue. By raising capital and partnering with experienced operators, GenCap has already acquired a medical software provider, an accounting firm, and a premium preschool in under two years.

Co-founders Zachary Lee and Zad Ngor explain why acquiring an established, profitable company is often a much smarter entrepreneurial path than building a tech startup from scratch. They explore the operational realities behind their three recent acquisitions, their ambition to build the region's first serial acquirer of SMEs, and what retiring Malaysian founders must know to confidently sell their life's work.

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MicFront is not a traditional public speaking class; it is a psychology-first education model. Co-founded in 2017 by Mas Mahathir and licensed counsellor Dr Jolynn Ch'ng, the academy operates on the thesis that speaking anxiety is a psychological barrier rather than a mechanical flaw. This distinct curriculum differentiator has proven highly successful commercially, allowing the company to scale rapidly into a multi-vertical education business.

Mahathir and Dr. Jolynn talk to us about how they successfully transitioned the business away from relying solely on founder-driven marketing to build a sustainable network, the specific criteria they look for when selecting franchisees, and the commercial strategy behind their upcoming attempt at the Malaysian Book of Records with a massive 1000-student speaking event.

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KC Purusotman began his career at just 15 years old by throwing parties. Twenty-five years later, he operates one of Malaysia's most diverse and dynamic hospitality companies. Continuum Hospitality Group manages an expansive portfolio that features the Pinkfish Music & Arts Festival alongside prominent nightclubs like Kyo KL. In the culinary space, the group also operates the rapidly expanding Malay fine dining brand Cili Kampung and the Italian restaurant Stefania. Beyond traditional hospitality, KC co-founded Lion Music Group, the label responsible for launching the hit Malaysian girl group Dolla.

The journey to this scale was heavily tested during the pandemic. To survive the lockdowns that severely impacted the F&B industry, KC took out two personal loans and bought out a partner, betting everything that the post-pandemic experience economy would eventually return stronger than ever. That calculated risk paid off. Today, the group is aggressively expanding, pushing Pinkfish into massive arena shows and preparing to take its dining concepts regional.

KC joins us to discuss what it truly takes to build, manage, and scale an operation that spans dining, nightlife, and music. We break down the complex financial realities of running a high-end nightclub, explore why building a music label made strategic business sense for a hospitality operator, and examine his ambitious roadmap to take his homegrown Malaysian brands to an international audience.

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Frontline staff in hospitality and facility management are often treated as the forgotten workforce. Many lack corporate email addresses and are forced to endure long, tedious training sessions through traditional learning management systems. Matthew Spriegel saw this disconnect and founded Atiom, a behavioural technology platform built specifically for service industries. Acting more like TikTok than Netflix, the mobile app delivers bite-sized, daily microlearning modules to build atomic habits without overwhelming the user.

Instead of reading PowerPoint slides, employees use Atiom to practice handling difficult guest scenarios through AI-powered roleplay in a safe environment. The platform also offers peer recognition, real-time feedback, and a gamified points system to keep staff engaged and improve daily performance. Importantly, Matthew insists their AI strategy is strictly designed to augment human potential and support service connections, rather than replace human workers entirely.

This focus on frequency over volume has proven highly successful. Atiom has doubled its revenue for three consecutive years without relying on massive institutional funding rounds. Currently serving major hotel groups like Accor and IHG, the company is now expanding aggressively into the facility management sector to support the hidden workers behind global corporate offices. Matthew joins us to discuss the business of behavioural change and his vision to build the category-defining performance platform for service-first industries.

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In 2016, a faded 1930s Art Deco building in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown sold for RM29 million. Once the tallest building in the city, its architectural history had been completely obscured by commercial signboards and neglect. Justin Chen and his family's Singapore-based real estate group, Arcc Holdings, acquired the building and spent six years carefully determining its commercial future.

The result is Else, a 49-key boutique hotel that opened in September 2022 to fill a clear gap in the Malaysian hospitality market. Rather than importing foreign concepts, the property champions local creative talent through collaborations with Malaysian designers, chefs, and artists. Three years later, the hotel is operationally profitable, growing at a steady 15 to 20 percent year-on-year, and holds the rare distinction of being the only Malaysian property to earn both a Michelin Key and a spot on the Tatler Asia Top 100 Hotels list.

Justin joins us to discuss the financial realities of heritage hospitality, and what the group plans to build next now that they have successfully proven their concept.

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Every business deal relies on knowing exactly who you are dealing with, but mapping corporate relationships across Asia is an incredibly challenging task. Daryl Neo spent years as a regulator at the Singapore Exchange, manually tracing ownership chains and trying to uncover who was truly behind complex business structures. As corporate networks expanded and data volumes exploded, this painstaking process became entirely unsustainable.

In 2011, Daryl and his co-founder Charles Poon left the SGX to build Handshakes, the tool they always wished they had. Today, it is the largest aggregator of ASEAN and China private market data, visually mapping corporate relationships and hidden connections to reduce due diligence workflows from months to hours. Backed by investors like Nikkei Inc, SPH Media, and S&P Global, the platform has successfully exposed the networks behind cross-border investment scams, penny stock crashes, and major conflict-of-interest cases.

Daryl talks to us about the significance of having global financial giants on their cap table, the introduction of their new AI Map Summariser, and why Malaysian business leaders need to shift their mindset from viewing due diligence as a boring compliance cost to treating it as a valuable intelligence asset.

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Small business owners often look at a declining pipeline and assume they have a sales problem, but what they usually have is a leadership deficit. Lacking the capital to hire a high-quality, full-time sales director, many SMEs resort to one-off, traditional sales training workshops. However, these event-based sessions often fail to produce sustainable results because they do not embed actual behavior changes or apply a data-driven, scientific rigor to the company's daily sales process.  

SalesGeek was founded to bridge this exact gap. Created by Richard Few, the company operates a fractional sales leadership model, providing businesses with part-time sales directors for as little as 5 percent of a full-time executive's salary. Through a rapidly growing franchise system, SalesGeek deploys highly experienced sales professionals to work directly with founders. These directors refine go-to-market strategies, build robust data processes, and actively mentor local teams over an average two-year engagement until they successfully make themselves redundant.  

Now establishing Malaysia as their Southeast Asian hub, Richard joins us to unpack the unit economics of a global, completely investor-free franchise. We discuss the severe limitations of traditional corporate sales roles that drive top talent toward franchise ownership, the financial structure distinguishing their "solo" and "scale-up" models, and why Malaysia's high concentration of SMEs makes it the perfect market for their expansion.

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Operating a restaurant in Singapore is exceptionally challenging. With world-leading commercial rents, strict labour laws, and volatile food costs, traditional F&B margins are razor-thin. Joseph Ryan spent years navigating this system, opening major outlets like Five Guys for the Zouk Group in Malaysia. Seeing these structural flaws worsen after the pandemic, he realised the industry needed a completely new approach.

His answer is Freshpod. Founded in 2021 with an ex-Goldman Sachs banker, this autonomous food kiosk bypasses traditional restaurant leases entirely. Operating without a chef or cashier, the fully refrigerated machines assemble fresh, customisable meal bowls in under 90 seconds. Following three years of R&D, they are now deployed in high-footfall locations like Gleneagles Hospital and Grab's headquarters, and are replenished daily.

With over 60 locations locked in for expansion, Joseph joins us to discuss the business of automated food delivery. We explore the complex engineering required to keep machine-dispensed food fresh and safe, how the kiosk financial model compares to a traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant, and their possible expansion into Malaysia.

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When Choy Peng Yew last appeared on the show in early 2023, Pet World was on a massive growth trajectory. As Malaysia's largest homegrown pet food manufacturer behind household brands like ProDiet, ProBalance, and Delizios, the company was scaling at an impressive 27% CAGR. At the time, financial headlines were buzzing about a potential US$100M public listing in Singapore. However, the IPO never materialised. Instead, the company shifted its mandate from public markets toward strategic partnerships and private expansion.

Amidst this corporate restructuring, Pet World quietly accomplished something entirely unexpected. Producing over 100,000 tonnes of pet food annually, the company partnered with SPCA Selangor and Singapore-based Nutrition Technologies to formulate Malaysia's first dog food using Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) protein. This leap into sustainable, insect-based nutrition signals a major shift in the company's product direction and their approach to the evolving global pet wellness market.

Choy Peng Yew returns to the studio to unpack what the last two years have actually looked like from the inside. We discuss the strategic decision to pursue regional partnerships over a public listing, the science and commercial viability behind sustainable insect protein, and the company's aggressive expansion strategy across Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East as they navigate the pet food market in 2026.

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Fresh off an $8 million Series A funding round co-led personally by the CEO of Bybit, David Low, Co-Founder and CEO of Hata, unpacks what’s next for this young crypto exchange. 

We discuss how the platform accumulated over 225,000 users and passed RM100 million in assets under custody, the heavy capital requirements needed to incentivise professional market makers for deep order-book liquidity, and how they cleaned up their cap table to streamline corporate execution.

David also shares how Hata is actively de-risking its business from market volatility by shifting away from purely activity-based trading fees toward institutional custody solutions, staking products, and hands-on corporate B2B onboarding. 

Finally, we explore the Securities Commission's newly updated regulatory guidelines, explaining why faster coin-listing paths coupled with higher capital requirements are a net positive for maturing Malaysia's Web3 ecosystem.

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Red Communications has been running since 1999 — 26 years of producing television, film, branded content, and digital programming for audiences that the industry had largely ignored: women, young people, families. The 3R show ran for 15 years and was funded entirely by sponsors. Gol & Gincu became a film and a TV series. Kami did the same. Oh My English ran for six years on Astro. Club Mickey Mouse ran for five years on Disney. The company has produced 14 films. The 15th, Khadam, opens in cinemas on 11 June 2026.

Between the first film and the 15th: a breast cancer diagnosis in 2012, a six-month treatment hiatus during which RM1 million in reserves disappeared and RM1 million in debt appeared, a pandemic that nearly took the company, and a decision to sell a stake to Astro just to stay afloat.

Founder and Executive Producer of Red Communications Lina Tan talks to us about what the business of creativity actually looks like — the budgets, the red tape, the streaming disruption, the influencer competition, and the specific madness of trying to get a Malaysian film made and seen.

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In Japan and South Korea, parking a car is entirely automated. You drive into a bay, turn off your engine, and walk away while a robotic system lifts and stores your vehicle in a multi-level tower. There are no ramps, no circling for spots, and no wasted space. Yet in Malaysia, this highly efficient infrastructure remains virtually unseen.

Ir. Yow Kai Yong has spent the last 14 years trying to change that. A consultant engineer with two decades of experience in Malaysia's property development sector, he started Parktech Solutions in 2011 with four other co-founders. As co-founders eventually left due to a sluggish market, he became the last person standing, officially taking over the company in 2021. Today, that persistence is paying off in a massive way. Parktech Solutions is now preparing to install one of the largest automated car parking systems in ASEAN at Milla Residence in Wangsa Maju. Built in partnership with Beverly Group and South Korea's Samjung Tech, the project features 2,358 bays and 21 car lifts, pushing the company's order book to a RM100 million.

Kai Yong joins us to discuss the business and mechanics of automated car parking systems. We cover what it takes to survive for over a decade pushing a product the local market wasn't ready for, the sudden shift driving their eight-figure revenue projections for 2026, and why robotic parking is no longer just a luxury convenience, but a critical sustainability and urban density play that Malaysian developers can no longer ignore.

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After a 30-year career at PETRONAS, a pandemic-induced mental health challenge pushed Zalina Abdul Rahim to completely rethink her retirement. Retreating to her family's farm in Hulu Langat, she witnessed three distinct crises converging at once: a generation of city children completely disconnected from nature, neighbouring farmers losing their entire harvests to lockdowns, and devastating local floods that demanded immediate community action.

Her response was not a casual retirement hobby. In 2021, Zalina launched Ekar Lui Farm School, a bootstrapped enterprise offering STEM and sustainability-based learning in a real-world agricultural setting. Catering to mainstream schools, corporate leadership programmes, and neurodivergent children, the social enterprise has proven its market demand, growing its operations by 200 percent in 2025 without a single ringgit of external investment.

Zalina talks to us about the tight unit economics of keeping animals fed and children engaged on a bootstrapped budget, how she gained access to grants and collaborations which helped accelerate growth, and what it takes to build a viable ESG education hub that prioritises purpose over pure profit.

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The enterprise AI market is currently flooded with polished demos, confident sales pitches, and massive invoices. But behind the scenes, many of these highly touted agents and automation platforms break the moment they encounter real data, real users, and edge cases. Genta AI Solutions has been hired repeatedly to fix this exact problem, stepping in to replace failing AI systems built by other vendors. It is a costly industry reality that most tech companies refuse to talk about.

What makes this story unusual is the person telling it. Mahmoud Ashraf (Komy) is a 22-year-old final-year cybersecurity student at Asia Pacific University in Kuala Lumpur. He founded Genta in late 2024 and bootstrapped it to high six-figure revenues in under a year with zero ad spend. Serving enterprise clients across the US and Europe, Genta builds custom AI agents with a strict "no platform lock-in" policy, ensuring clients actually own the infrastructure that gets built.

Komy joins us to expose the growing gap between AI marketing and actual AI engineering. We discuss what it really takes to build reliable artificial intelligence for operations-heavy businesses, why client ownership is becoming the ultimate dealbreaker in enterprise procurement, and how he navigates the grueling balance of running a scaling global business while completing his final year of university.

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Edwin Yap's family built the physical infrastructure of retail. As the leaders of Jemco Group, they grew the family business into Malaysia's largest producer of the shelving, racking, and logistics systems that hold supermarkets and warehouses together across Southeast Asia. Taking over the company during the pandemic, Edwin spent years observing the shop floor and realised the next essential layer of retail infrastructure wouldn't be a static fixture. It would be a robot.

To capitalise on this shift, Edwin launched MR. ROBOT, a startup betting that humanoid and service robots are moving from science fiction to the shop floor faster than most business leaders realise. He recently secured a US$5 million funding round from an investor lineup that includes MR D.I.Y. International, China's AgiBot, and The Hub's Investment Group, signed an MOU at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, and is now developing a RM10 million ASEAN-first robotics data collection centre to power the next generation of physical AI.

Edwin joins us to unpack the business of "embodied AI", how they are already driving a 20 percent sales uplift at customer events, and the honest reality of what humanoid robots can and cannot do in 2026.

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With a massive network of 30 hospitals serving over 3 million patients annually, KPJ Healthcare faces the massive challenge of ensuring consistent, high-quality care across facilities of varying sizes and ages. To achieve this, the group is rolling out the KPJ Health System (KPJHS) — an integrated framework designed to standardise treatment, control costs, and manage patient expectations across the entire network.

Positioned as Malaysia's first private academic health system, KPJHS is built on the core pillars of practice, education, and research & innovation. By centralising highly specialised medical expertise into regional Centers of Excellence (COEs) via a hub-and-spoke model, KPJ ensures patients with complex conditions receive seamless, top-tier care without needing to repeat diagnostic tests or navigate a messy referral process.  

Prof. Dato' Dr. Hanafiah Harunarashid, Chief Medical Director of KPJ Healthcare, joins us to unpack this ambitious operational transformation. We discuss the strategy behind launching 15 COEs by 2030, how a real-time clinical dashboard measures surgical outcomes against global benchmarks like the Mayo Clinic, and the five-year cultural shift required to put the patient at the absolute center of the healthcare system.

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After spending decades in clinical medicine and digital health, Dr. Raymond Choy analysed over three million data points on drug pricing and uncovered a massive inefficiency. In just a four-week trial tracking only six drugs, one insurer saved RM100,000. The waste in the system wasn't theoretical. It was quantifiable.

To fix this broken journey, Dr. Raymond and commercial lead Fabian Lim launched HEYDOC Health. Dubbed the "Waze of Healthcare," the platform doesn't try to replace traditional doctors, clinics, or pharmacies. Instead, it acts as an intelligent orchestrator. Powered by an AI intelligence layer called RightK and a RM29.90 monthly subscription known as FutureK, the platform connects every touchpoint in the outpatient journey to make the entire system smarter, cheaper, and infinitely easier for patients to navigate.

Dr. Raymond and Fabian join us to discuss scaling the business to a RM7m ARR, the validation from their recent Foodpanda pilot, and whether a simple 1-ringgit-a-day subscription can actually solve the quiet sustainability crisis plaguing Malaysian primary care.

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To compete at the international level, Malaysian National Figure Skaters Eunice and Edmund Lai train six hours a day on ice that costs money, with coaches that cost money, in a system that offers very little financial support. For most national athletes in this position, the choice is simple: find a wealthy sponsor or quit the sport entirely.

Instead of waiting for a sponsor, Eunice and Edmund decided to build their own financial engine. They founded Grano Break, an artisan granola brand designed specifically to fund their athletic ambitions: every bag sold is a micro-sponsorship of the duo that directly funds their international coaching and competition fees.

The duo, together with their mother Selina Ling join us to discuss the hidden financial realities of being a national athlete in Malaysia, their pivot into OEM manufacturing, and the intense discipline required to build a profitable business while simultaneously training to represent the country on the global stage.

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In 2017, Spark Liang quit a comfortable job as a Thomson Reuters analyst to make financial literacy videos from his bedroom. Within six months, he organically grew 100,000 Facebook followers and successfully raised RM1.5 million from them through equity crowdfunding on Ata Plus. In a rare startup success story, he bought back those early shares, giving his original investors a massive 300 percent return.  

However, the journey wasn't entirely smooth. After discovering the harsh reality that everyday consumers rarely want to pay for financial education, Spark executed a major business pivot toward B2B corporate training. Today, FinSpark has evolved from a simple media channel into a diversified seven-figure corporate group. The ecosystem now spans financial media, SC-licensed corporate consulting under MMC Financial, and even a TVET institution known as SUMA College.  

Spark joins us to unpack the realities of monetising an online following, why identifying a problem doesn't always equal a viable market, and the group's ambitious five-year roadmap toward a public listing.

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Malaysia's corporate training market runs on slides, seminars, and motivational talks. It is also, by most accounts, not working. Burnout is at record levels. Trust between leaders and teams is eroding. And the soft skills that make the difference — self-awareness, emotional presence, the ability to genuinely listen — are exactly the ones a classroom cannot teach.

Nurul Atiqah Anuar believes the answer might be standing in a paddock.

A Chartered Governance Professional who spent a decade in boardrooms across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, she co-founded Setenang — a leadership development programme built around one of the oldest non-verbal feedback systems in the world: horses. Not riding them. But standing with them, leading them, and being read by them.

Atiqah joins us to talk about how a 500kg animal with no interest in your job title, your KPIs, or your quarterly results will show you — in real time and without filters — exactly who you are as a leader.

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Childhood friends and lifelong gamers Kashif Khairul and Rizal Azlan co-founded 1+1 Studios in 2024 with one conviction: that the best co-op games should bring people closer together, not just put them side by side. Their debut title, Duo Quest, is a co-op roguelite deckbuilder where your friendship is literally a game mechanic — you answer questions about each other to generate attacks, meaning the better you know your partner, the harder you hit.

The game has not yet launched commercially. But it has already won an award at Gamescom Asia in Bangkok, been nominated for Best Multiplayer at Gamescom LATAM 2026, drawn over 5,000 players to a closed playtest, and gone viral in Japan with over a million views. All this from a six-person studio in Kuala Lumpur, with no external funding.

Kashif and Rizal join us to discuss the gap in the co-op game market, why friendship became the design brief, what Malaysian indie developers need to break through and whether the local scene is more ready than it looks.

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Andrew Anthony has been in the events industry since 1995 — when he was still in school, working as an event crewmember to fund his own education, with RM50 and a late brother who showed him the ropes. Three decades later, Define International has ran what Google called their first ever business listing activation in Malaysia, handled a landmark event involving the United States Presidential office, won gold at the MAHB Marketing Excellence Awards, launched a nine-storey ship at Keppel Shipyard in Singapore, and built a list of over 3,000 clients.

And he has done all of this without a single ringgit of external investment. 

Andrew joins us to discuss the RM18 billion industry that policymakers are still not taking seriously enough, the payment terms problem that has plagued the events industry for decades, and the stubbornness of doing things right.

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ESG guidance and advisory firm Joshua Rayan Communications (JRC) was established in 2007 with one clear conviction: that sustainability reporting should be done properly, personally, and affordably. Today, the bootstrapped, seven-figure firm boasts a near 100% client closure rate and serves corporate giants like Sunway, BAT, Ranhill, and MMC across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. 

Rather than treating ESG as a simple box-ticking reporting exercise, JRC provides end-to-end advisory. Using a unique "vanguard system" where senior leaders remain actively involved in project execution, they help clients identify critical data gaps long before a final report is drafted.  

Founder and CEO Joshua Rayan joins us to unpack the business of sustainability reporting in a highly competitive market. We discuss running a 20-person consultancy with a "no-boss" culture, why homegrown ESG practitioners want to be more actively engaged in national policy and standard-setting rooms, and the firm’s ambitious five-year roadmap toward an IPO.

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In November 2022, two grounded pilots came on Open For Business to talk about a smash burger stall they'd started from a home kitchen during the pandemic. The story was charming — airline pilots flipping burgers at night markets — but the business was still early, still scrappy, still unproven.

A lot has changed since then. Grill Haven now has a proper restaurant in Plaza Damansara, Bukit Damansara. FY2025 revenue hit RM3.65 million, up some 48% year-on-year. The team has been to Japan, twice. And they have their sights set on Johor, Penang, and a multi-brand F&B empire. 

We catch up with co-founder First Officer Afiq Nazar to find out what the last three years actually looked like from the inside — the discipline, the growing pains, and whether two pilots can really build a restaurant group without choosing between the cockpit and the kitchen.

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In 1977, Theresa Padilla moved from Mexico to the United States with nothing. Three years later, she took a job as a press operator at a small plastics company in Oxnard, California. That company was Rakar Inc. - founded in 1951 to make electrical connectors and insulators for the US military.

Forty years later, she bought it.

Today, Rakar is a Tier 2 supplier to NASA, Boeing, SpaceX, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the US Defense Logistics Agency. Theresa's son Diego, Executive Vice President and Advanced Manufacturing Lead, runs strategy and communications alongside her.

This is the story of an immigrant woman who rose from the factory floor to run one of America's most specialised aerospace suppliers,  and why she believes Malaysia is the next chapter.

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By 2048, Malaysia will officially be an aged nation, yet currently, only 14.7 percent of our elderly are actually ageing healthily. The traditional eldercare market is almost entirely focused on clinical nursing homes, leaving a massive gap for seniors who are medically stable but socially isolated. After witnessing this crisis firsthand in the home care sector, co-founders Gan Pooi Chan and Sandyeep Sandhu realised the real crisis in the care economy wasn't just a shortage of medical beds — it was a severe shortage of belonging.

To solve this, PC and Sandyeep launched Kampungku in 2023. Actively rejecting the traditional "daycare" label, they built an engaging clubhouse where independent seniors can exercise, socialise, and rebuild their community on their own terms. Treating seniors as active participants rather than patients has proven to be a highly viable business model, with the company reaching full profitability and stabilising at a 15 percent quarter-on-quarter growth rate.

PC and Sandy join us to unpack the dynamics of preventative eldercare and the structural challenges facing the industry. We discuss why lumping active senior centres into the same tax category as beauty and wellness is an unfair policy burdening middle-class families, the looming 60 percent nursing shortage threatening the sector, and a highly anticipated "larger-than-life" partnership that could completely change the scale of Kampungku's operations.

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LEGO is one of the most valuable toy brands in the world. It is also, for a large portion of its most devoted fans, out of reach — either because the official sets don't go far enough in complexity, or because building a truly ambitious custom creation costs a small fortune in loose bricks.

EasternBrick was built to solve that problem. Founded by Wong Keit Sean & Bilal Raja — both veterans of Lumos, the smart bicycle helmet startup that raised USD 2.9 million on Kickstarter and made Oprah's Favourite Things list — EasternBrick is a LEGO-compatible brick company focused on large, complex sets for adults. Sets that go where LEGO doesn't.

But EasternBrick is not just another alternative brick brand. It's also a quiet act of justice for the independent designers whose creations get stolen by cheap factories and sold without credit or compensation. Sean and Bilal talk to us about building a global D2C business from Malaysia with zero paid marketing, low-seven-figure revenue in under six months, and a pre-order model that has kept the business profitable from day one.

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Malaysia spends over RM1 billion importing onions every single year. For decades, it was assumed that our local soil and climate were fundamentally hostile to the crop, making it cheaper to rely entirely on foreign manpower and imports. Shahrizal Denci is stepping into that massive market gap to prove that assumption wrong. As the founder of Bantu Tani, an agricultural social enterprise based in Sabah, he is building Malaysia’s first comprehensive onion ecosystem from scratch.

After completely failing his first two crop cycles, Shahrizal partnered with MARDI to refine the growing model to successfully cultivate the resilient BAW2 shallot variety. Today, Bantu Tani has produced over 200 tons and developed a high-margin seed that harvests in just 70 days. Backed by a RM2.4 million grant from the Ministry of Economy, they are currently expanding across 40 acres, and building critical post-harvest infrastructure—after discovering that a lack of proper drying houses was initially causing a 20% loss in their harvests.

Shahrizal joins us to discuss their journey; how a 40-hour bus and boat trip to Sulawesi, Indonesia solved their drying bottleneck, and how their farm is actively helping rural communities earn over RM2,000 a month while pushing Malaysia toward its 2030 goal of 30% self-sufficiency.

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Most conversations about the future of technology are framed entirely around Artificial Intelligence. But what if the next massive leap in computing isn't artificial at all? Cortical Labs is pioneering a new paradigm known as "Synthetic Biological Intelligence," developing systems that merge living, lab-grown neurons with traditional silicon hardware.

Powered by real brain cells cultivated from just 10 millilitres of the founder's own blood, these biological computing units consume the energy of a basic pocket calculator, yet possess the ability to learn in real-time. Cortical Labs has already demonstrated this by teaching 200,000 neurons to play video games like Pong and Doom. Now, they are transitioning from a sci-fi kitchen experiment into a commercial enterprise, raising capital to scale their hardware manufacturing right here in Malaysia.

Founder and CEO of Cortical Labs Dr. Chong Hon Weng joins us to unpack the realities of biological computing, the physical energy limits of traditional AI, and the ethics of computing with living neurons.

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For three decades, Cyberview has operated primarily as the landowner and custodian of Cyberjaya. Now, the agency is making a massive strategic pivot to become an active, innovation-led property developer. As the city celebrates its 30th anniversary, Cyberview is rolling out its new Strategic Plan 2026–2030 and a comprehensive 5-year Masterplan aimed at unlocking land value, generating recurring income, and deepening the local technology ecosystem.

CEO of Cyberview, Kamarul Ariffin Abdul Samad joins us to unpack this major transition. We discuss the competitive realities of entering the Malaysian property market, how "placemaking" can solve the challenge of retaining top tech talent , and the strategic roadmap to ensuring Cyberjaya remains the preferred destination for Foreign Direct Investment in Southeast Asia.

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How did Selkirk scale a "mom-and-pop" hobby into a $200 million pickleball performance powerhouse?

In 2014, long before pickleball became America's fastest-growing sport, two teenage brothers opted out of college to start making pickleball paddles. Today, Selkirk Sport is a premium market leader, recently securing a $30 million private equity investment at a $200 million valuation.

As they target $100 million in revenue for 2026, the founders tell us their story, but also reveal why they have anchored their global "Orchestration" hub in Kuala Lumpur to dominate the Asian market.

Tune In To Find Out:

The 1,900% Surge: The internal mechanics of scaling from a garage to a $200M valuation, and surviving an overnight 70% revenue crash.

The Vertical Moat: Why Selkirk killed the high-margin "dropshipping" model to double down on in-house US manufacturing and R&D.

The $30M Trigger: Why they finally accepted private equity after 10 years of self-funding to dominate the coming industry consolidation.

The M&A Hunt: Their strategy for acquiring strategic brands that "fit the ecosystem" to reinforce the Selkirk brand while driving top-line revenue.

The KL HQ Strategy: Why the founders are hiring 50+ staff in Malaysia to control the software and supply chain layer of their global empire.

The "Boomstick" Investment: How spending 8x more on R&D and hiring an in-house patent attorney created a high-tech barrier to entry.

Photo Credit: Selkirk Sport

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In Malaysia's RM6 billion early childhood education market, the default playbook is simple: pack in as many children as possible, keep educator costs low, and lean on academic drills to justify premium fees. Justina Chen wants nothing to do with that model.

A former PwC consultant and World Bank policy researcher turned UCL-trained early years educator, Justina co-founded Wonder Village in 2023 — a deliberately tiny nursery and preschool in PJ with a maximum of 26 children and ratios as low as 1:2. The business is bootstrapped, not yet profitable, and completely intentional about all of it.

She joins us to talk about the business of building slowly — and why in a sector obsessed with scale, restraint might be the real competitive advantage.

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Senang has quietly become one of Malaysia's most interesting insurtech stories. The company hit EBITDA profitability in 2024. Gross Written Premium reached RM44.9 million. They've expanded to the Philippines. And they've gone from a micro-insurance startup to something far more ambitious: a unified embedded finance platform that now covers protection, savings, and alternative credit.

But Senang has also gotten strange, in the best possible way. They've launched a pet insurance product that identifies your dog by its nose print; no microchip required. And a traffic delay insurance that pays out automatically when you're stuck on the PLUS highway, without you ever filing a claim.

CEO & Founder Sharian Raj returns to Open For Business to explain what 'embedded finance' actually means in 2026 and why he thinks Senang is building the financial supermarket for the 140 million Southeast Asians who have been underserved by traditional finance their entire lives.

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For independent hotels and boutique operators across Southeast Asia, managing guest communication can be a logistical nightmare. Understaffed front desks are overwhelmed by fragmented messages across WhatsApp, Agoda, Airbnb, and direct emails. When communication breaks down, response times drop, guest satisfaction plummets, and critical opportunities to drive additional revenue are completely lost.

Enter Janus Digital. Lee Wei Chee, Director of Janus Digital, is building an AI-native, omnichannel guest engagement platform tailored specifically for the regional hospitality market. Rather than treating customer service as a costly operational headache, Janus centralizes all guest communications and uses artificial intelligence to automate workflows, answer FAQs, and push timely upsells—turning everyday chats into a high-intent sales channel.

Wei Chee joins us to discuss how AI chat automation is evolving from a luxury into a mandatory operational tool for small hotels, the exact return on investment for a RM399 monthly software subscription, and how AI-driven analytics can uncover hidden service gaps to unlock new revenue streams.

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Debbie Soh started her career as a home tutor before pivoting to an online model during the pandemic. By leveraging free, short-form math content on social media, she built a massive organic funnel that has propelled her bootstrapped company, Debbie Soh Education, into the seven-figure revenue range. Today, she’s expanding her revenue streams into e-commerce, publishing, and branded content.

Debbie joins us to talk about the unfiltered reality of scaling an education business. We discuss the profit margins of digital tuition, the challenge of building a team that can keep up with a founder-led brand, and the hidden burnout that comes with trying to balance purpose with profitability.

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Adrian Goh has been in the pet care game since 2004, eventually launching Wet Nose in 2011 to create a completely bootstrapped, neighbourhood pet hub. 

Currently generating up to RM800,000 in annual revenue, the business relies on localised word-of-mouth customer acquisition and specialised pet care knowledge to retain its client base against the heavy discounts of online competitors.

Adrian joins us to discuss the financial realities of running a service-based retail shop. We explore the unit economics of pet grooming versus product sales, the occupational hazards and liability of handling aggressive pets, and the strategic pivot toward opening a daycare facility to stabilise post-pandemic cash flow.

Image Credit: Wet Nose Pet Shop

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Virunthu at KL Town is currently recognised as Malaysia’s largest Indian food court, operating a vibrant, community-driven dining ecosystem. The platform was created to solve the high barrier to entry for small F&B entrepreneurs by removing the burden of standalone restaurant costs. Hosting over 17 diverse local and international food vendors under one roof, Virunthu combines authentic dining with live entertainment and cultural experiences.

The business generates revenue through a mix of fixed stall rentals, revenue-sharing agreements, and in-house beverage sales, recently scaling into the mid-to-high six-figure revenue range.

Founder Gopal Rajandren joins us to discuss the financial mechanics of running a multi-vendor hospitality hub. We also explore the unit economics of revenue-sharing versus fixed rental, the operational challenge of maintaining strict quality control across 17 independent chefs, and the strategy to scale this cultural dining destination into a nationwide brand.

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The Hooton Retreat is a premium glamping and eco-tourism site in Negeri Sembilan. 

By leveraging its direct adjacency to a permanent forest reserve, the business positions itself as a distraction-free destination for high-spending tourists and corporate leadership teams.

Founded in September 2018, the completely bootstrapped operation has scaled to generate 7-figure annual revenues and was recently recognised by Tourism Malaysia as a primary touristic highlight in the state.

Founder Bryan Gan joins us to discuss the capital efficiency required to build a glamping site, the operational challenges of executing massive outdoor festivals, and the strategic roadmap to position the entire brand for a high-value acquisition within the next five years.

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Transforming a creative passion into a sustainable business requires strict pricing strategies and solid operational systems. Lakhshmi Priya Suppiah, a former interior architect, launched Ministry of Cakes to build a full-time, bootstrapped bakery brand specialising in premium, custom-designed celebration cakes.

Today, the business generates up to RM300,000 in annual revenue and services major corporate clients, navigating the difficult transition from a home-based kitchen to a physical cafe and event space.

Lakhshmi joins us to discuss the financial mechanics of the premium baking industry, the unit economics of highly customised orders, the operational challenges of executing massive corporate catering events, and the strategy required to scale a creative, design-heavy business without relying solely on the founder.

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Founded in 2020, TYMBA Education Group entered the market to address low pass rates and limited access to accounting qualifications outside major cities in Malaysia. Originally operating as a bootstrapped entity, the company has since achieved 55% year-on-year revenue growth and expanded its footprint across five ASEAN countries.

Recently, TYMBA secured a RM10 million investment from VentureTECH to aggressively scale its proprietary digital learning platform, TYMBAFlex, and deepen its regional presence.

CEO Airil Razali returns to Open For Business to share the company's evolution. We discuss the financial mechanics of transitioning from a bootstrapped startup to an institutionally funded EdTech group, the operational challenge of maintaining ACCA Platinum standards across borders, and whether TYMBA has successfully moved the needle on local demographic representation in the accounting sector since his last interview.

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The Ministry of Education recently updated its guidelines to allow optional Standard 1 enrolment for six-year-olds. While this policy provides families with flexibility, it has sparked anxiety among parents trying to assess if their child is genuinely prepared for a structured primary school environment.

Recognising this immediate market uncertainty, Smart Reader Kids has launched a School Readiness Check and tailored preparation programmes to bridge the gap between preschool and Standard 1. 

But beyond classroom curriculums, Smart Reader Worldwide operates a highly lucrative, multi-million ringgit franchise ecosystem. Executive Director of Smart Reader Kids, Keefe Ong joins us to discuss the definition of school readiness, the financial mechanics of their franchise model, the strategy behind bootstrapped regional expansion into Cambodia and Australia, and the operational challenge of maintaining strict quality control across a massive international network.

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Every single day, millions of students step onto a school bus and embark on what is largely an "invisible journey." For the hour they are on the road, parents are left guessing, schools have limited oversight, and drivers are forced to manage routes using paper registers and endless WhatsApp messages. Despite moving our most valuable assets, the school transport sector has remained surprisingly untouched by modern logistics technology.

Bus Buddy is stepping in to digitize this blind spot. Backed by the synergy of a 40-year-old traditional bus company and the tech firm Asia Mobiliti, Bus Buddy is a child-centric mobility platform connecting families, schools, and transporters.

CEO Samuel Yee joins us to talk about the business of student mobility, how growing up in a traditional school bus family inspired a highly scalable SaaS platform, and the ambitious Phase 2 roadmap to become a massive aggregator for child-friendly transport.

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The Kuala Lumpur F&B industry can be brutal. Most trendy dining spots survive for two or three years before becoming obsolete. Yet, 14 years on, The Marini’s Group remains one of the city's most formidable, independently owned hospitality empires.

Founded by Modesto Marini and Elizabeth Hew-Marini, the group operates some of the most lucrative and iconic venues in the capital, including Marini’s on 57, the Michelin-selected steakhouse Marble 8, the Spanish-Nikkei concept Mesa on 51, and the high-energy nightclub, Müro. But beyond the glamour of celebrity guests and panoramic skyline views lies a highly disciplined business operation.

Elizabeth joins us to discuss the financial mechanics of ultra-premium hospitality, the unit economics of securing rooftop real estate, and why they have refused to hand their empire over to private equity.

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Gurcharanvir Singh built his company because he had a dream about washing shoes.

Three years later, Guchi Cuci is a highly profitable, 5-figure home-based shoe cleaning service that has doubled its revenue every single year since inception. Operating entirely without commercial rent, Gurcharanvir leverages on organic TikTok virality to acquire customers, specifically targeting the "lazy or busy" demographic. Even more impressively, he manages this growing operation alongside a full-time career as an architect, a part-time job at a gym, and training for KL Fashion Week.

Gurcharanvir joins us to dissect the exact metrics behind his micro-business. We also look at the unit economics of pricing a service at the cost of a meal, the challenge of calculating Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) through social media algorithms, and the capital expenditure required to transition from cleaning sneakers to detailing cars.

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For years, the Malaysian property market has been dominated by a legacy "discovery-only" portal model. Real estate agents are forced to pay RM3,000 to RM8,000 in upfront annual subscriptions just to list properties, with zero performance guarantees. The result? Agents receive high volumes of raw traffic, but only 2% to 3% actually convert into real appointments.

Enter MyRumahBaru (MRB). Co-founded by Melvin Soh, Ching Yaw Hao, and Anthony Chin, MRB is an AI-powered property platform designed to destroy the traditional subscription model. Instead of charging for listings, MRB provides unlimited free listings and utilises an AI chatbot to converse with, pre-qualify, and financially vet buyers (including Debt Service Ratio calculations). Agents and developers are only charged a flat RM200 fee when a verified buyer actually shows up for an appointment. This model has successfully driven buyer show-up rates to over 90%.

Melvin joins us to dissect the hard metrics behind MRB's growth, the unit economics of a pay-per-performance marketplace, and why incumbent portals are structurally trapped from copying their technology.

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Fukuro Malaysia was founded in 2019 to fill the "missing middle" in the kitchenware market. Co-founders Daryl Lai and Kevin Lau recognised that local brands were trapped in a race to the bottom on price and quality, while international brands dominated the expensive, premium tier. Applying an FMCG approach to kitchen essentials, they bootstrapped Fukuro into a highly profitable brand generating RM14 million in annual revenue, with a presence in over 1,300 offline retail stores across Malaysia.

Daryl joins us in the studio to dissect the hard metrics behind Fukuro’s growth. We also discuss treating physical shelf space as a customer acquisition channel, the strategy for protecting unit margins against multinational competitors, and the roadmap to hitting RM50 million in annual revenue organically.

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