Open For Business
The flagship entrepreneurship show on BFM, featuring personal business stories from early stage start-ups to billionaire octogenarians in Malaysia and abroad. Notable guests include Martin Cooper, Julian Assange, Ralph Henry Baer, Tony Buzan, Isaac Tigrett, Robert Kiyosaki, and Nick Vujicic. The show also touches on news, issues, and trends affecting the SME industry and the broader business community.
Episodes
Turning an RM29M Heritage Site Into a Michelin Key Hotel
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
Mapping Hidden Corporate Connections Across Asia
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
SMEs Need a Sales Director, Not Sales Training
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 behav
The Restaurant Model Is Broken. Is Freshpod the Fix?
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
From Bugs to Bursa? Pet World's Ambitious Next Chapter
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 m
Hata: $8M Series A, Bybit CEO Backing, & New Crypto
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
26 Years, 15 Films & the Business No One Tells You About
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
The RM100M Bet on Automated Parking
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 chan
The Farm That Heals What Classrooms Can't
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
Building a Six-Figure Global AI Agency Before Graduation
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 ven
The Robot Revolution On The Retail Floor
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 laye
KPJ Healthcare: 3 Million Patients, One Standard of Care.
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 th
Building the Waze of Malaysian Healthcare
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 H
How Two Skaters Built a Business to Fund the Dream Malaysia Wouldn't
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 deci
From Bedroom YouTuber to a Seven Figure Finance Group
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
What A Horse Knows About Your Leadership, That You Don’t
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 an
Two Childhood Friends, A Game & A Million Views in Japan
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 t
The Stage Has Changed. Define’s Principles Haven't.
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 offic
The ESG Firm That Was 15 Years Early, Then Right On Time
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 t
Two Pilots, A Grill & A Burger Place
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
The Immigrant Story Behind America's Most Unlikely Aerospace Company
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, Lock
Not a Nursing Home. Not a Daycare. Something Better.
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 Sandy
The LEGO Alternative That Went Global Before It Had An Office
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 L
It Takes Shallot of Work to Fix Malaysian Agriculture
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 S
The Computer That Runs On Your Brain Cells
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 jus
Unlocking Land Value and the Future of Cyberjaya
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 in
Selkirk’s Garage Origins, $200M Valuation & KL Expansion
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 $1
The RM250K Nursery That Refuses to Scale Wrong
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
Senang: From Micro-Insurance to Financial Supermarket
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
Automating the Front Desk for Visit Malaysia 2026
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
How a TikTok Math Tutor Built a Seven Figure Business
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
Why Good Pet Groomers Are Harder to Find Than Customers
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 jo
The Real Hustle Behind Malaysia’s Biggest Indian Food Court
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
Getting High-Spending Tourists to Sleep in the Forest
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 rece
Baking Cakes That Actually Taste As Good As They Look
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 corp
Why Investors Just Put RM10M Into This Malaysian Accounting School
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
Inside Malaysia's Multi-Million Ringgit Preschool Empire
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 Readines
Putting the Yellow School Bus in Your Pocket
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 un
The ROI of the Skyline: 14 Years of The Marini’s Group
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’
I Dreamt of Washing Shoes (And It Made Me 5 Figures)
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" de
The PropTech Rebellion: How MyRumahBaru is Changing Real Estate
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
The FMCG Playbook: How Fukuro Scaled to RM14M Without VC Funding
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 RM
Preserving Amachi's Legacy One Appam At A Time
Amachi’s Palagaram is a brand dedicated entirely to preserving traditional Indian sweets and savories. What began as a heartfelt weekend project operating out of a family home in Subang Jaya—offering customers a warm, "1 Malaysia" open-house vibe—has now blossomed into a fully commercialised F&B operation.Aaron Jay Dason and Narmatha Shanmugam join us to share the deeply personal journey of ke
Polar Cold: The Agritech Startup Rebuilding Urban Refrigeration
In Southeast Asia, nearly 40% of food is wasted before it ever reaches the consumer. Much of this spoilage happens in the "last mile"—the chaotic journey between massive edge-of-city cold warehouses and the neighborhood restaurants, wet markets, and food courts that actually serve the community. For these SMEs, traditional cold rooms are a financial nightmare, often demanding over RM50,000 in upfr
Life After VC: How BloomThis Scaled to 8 Figures Solo
In 2023, after years of utilising seed and VC funding to scale their operations, BloomThis co-founders Penny Choo and Giden Lim executed a rare strategic move: they bought their company back. Today, the fully independent, vertically integrated floral and gifting e-commerce platform is generating 8-figure annual revenues with healthy 7-figure profit margins across Malaysia and Singapore.Penny joins
Menopause Asia: No, It’s Not Just Burnout
Perimenopause is rarely discussed in boardrooms, yet it causes 1 in 4 women to consider leaving the workforce — often at the absolute peak of their careers and earning potential.Joanne Ho knows this firsthand. After successfully building Malaysia’s first retail cupcake chain - Cupcake Chic, and scaling an online flower delivery business - Happy Bunch, Joanne found herself stepping away from her wo
Inside the Revival of Mum’s Place
For decades, Mum’s Place was an institutional dining destination in Petaling Jaya, famous for its comforting, Peranakan-influenced Malaysian dishes. When the original founders, Christopher De Mello and Jennifer Tee, retired and closed the restaurant in December 2021, it left a massive hole in the local culinary scene.But in January 2026, niece and nephew duo Nureen and Zareef Thajudeen, stepped up
The Messy Middle: Bootstrapping Cuura to 7 Figures
The local Malaysian beauty industry is dominated by aggressive marketing, promising consumers "flawless skin in 3 days" and chasing the latest viral TikTok trends. But when Sarah Shah Nor suffered from severe postpartum eczema, she realized those harsh, trend-chasing products were exactly what sensitive skin couldn't handle.Leaving behind her background in the fashion industry, Sarah founded Cuura
Can AI Save Malaysia’s Overstretched Hospitals?
Healthcare systems globally are buckling under the weight of administrative tasks. In Malaysia, where the doctor-to-patient ratio hovers around 1:450, frontline clinicians are facing severe burnout, spending hours after their shifts typing up medical notes. Enter Heidi: a Melbourne-based HealthTech startup providing a B2B SaaS AI Care Partner. Originally launched as an AI medical scribe to transcr
The Ecosystem Play: Why Gelatomania Is Building More Than Just Outlets
Most F&B founders measure success by the number of retail outlets they open. But Christine Tham and Leong Hoo Yin quickly realised that relying solely on retail is a "single-layer" business model that inevitably leads to a plateau. Founded in 2022, Gelatomania started as a retail brand but quickly pivoted to a much larger ambition: building an integrated, end-to-end gelato ecosystem for the As
Unstaffed And Profitable: Inside Malaysia’s Pre-Loved Book Empire
Is it possible to run a highly profitable retail business in premium shopping malls by selling products for just RM5 on the honour system?Adrian Ung, a seasoned commercial leader with 30 years of corporate experience, believed it was. In 2022, he co-founded Books For A Better World (BFBW), a social enterprise dedicated to giving pre-loved books a second life. Sourcing books from public donations a
The 8-Figure K-BBQ Empire: How Gu On Hacked The F&B Growth Curve
Gu On is not your average Korean BBQ joint. Launched in July 2023, the brand specialises in traditional Korean smoked meats, rich bone broths, and modern interpretations of Korean classics. But what truly sets Gu On apart is its rapid growth model. By leveraging a strategic "intrapreneurial" partnership and utilising a pre-existing central kitchen, founder Shuen Kuan bypassed the gruelling early-s
The Science Of Waste: How Bina BioX Is Replacing Plastic With Coffee And Mushrooms
Sustainability is often treated as a corporate branding exercise, but in reality, it is a deeply operational, systems-level problem. Replacing plastic sounds great in a boardroom, but making sustainable materials perform, scale, and integrate into real-world supply chains is notoriously difficult.After spending 20 years in the oil and gas sector, Rajes Kandasamy left the corporate world to tackle
The Sticky Business Of Scaling: From Pasar Malam To 7-Figure Corporate Gifting
Malaysia is sitting on a goldmine of natural biodiversity, yet local functional foods often suffer from a massive "trust deficit" due to adulterated products and poor branding. Tengku Ariputra decided to change that. Armed with RM5,000 crowdfunded from friends and family, he started handwriting labels and selling wild Tualang honey at local street markets.Today, his bootstrapped brand, Honey I'm H
The Business Of Play: How Litt Tak Built A 41-Year Toy Empire
Since 1985, Litt Tak has been the silent engine behind Malaysia’s toy industry. As the official distributor for global giants like Bandai, Takara Tomy, and Spin Master, they are responsible for putting everything from Gundam model kits and Tomica diecast cars to Cocomelon and Shopkins on the shelves of major retailers nationwide. But the toy industry is undergoing a massive shift. Toys are no long
How Dáo Desserts Took Tau Fu Fah To The Cafe Scene
For decades, tau fu fah and soy milk were largely considered traditional Chinese street food, but as dessert cafes booming with bubble tea, bingsu, and ice cream took over the Klang Valley, traditional desserts were left behind. In 2018, siblings Carmen, Joe, and Kelly Lau decided to change that. Drawing from their father’s 30-year legacy as the founder of Ipoh’s famous Woong Kee Bean Curd, they l
Monetising Intimacy: How Construct KL Turned A Balcony Into A Business
In a city overflowing with cafes and brunch spots, how does a home-cooked pancake on a balcony become one of KL's most talked-about dining experiences? Retrenched from a 9-year corporate career, Haermana Sivamohan craved genuine connection in a fast-paced, superficial world. In May 2025, she launched Construct KL out of her home in Bukit Tunku—inviting complete strangers to sit at her table, eat h
Randy’s Laundromat: Elevating The Malaysian Laundromat Experience
For most Malaysians, a trip to the local laundromat means sitting in a stuffy room staring at a phone while a machine spins. But what if you could turn that mundane routine into an elevated, relaxing ritual? Founded in early 2026 by high school buddies Nicholas and Khaisong, Randy's Laundromat in Ara Damansara is tackling this exact problem by merging a fully functional laundromat with a trendy ca
Marketing The MICE Industry: Why General Marketing Fails B2B Events
When the pandemic decimated the events industry in 2020, Melissa and Ethan found themselves retrenched. With just RM500 and no grand ambitions, they banded together to survive. Six years later, their survival plan has evolved into MET Communications (MetComms)—a highly profitable, mid-to-high six-figure boutique marketing agency. Their specialty? Putting "bums on seats." Unlike general creative ag
How To Sell Canopies On TikTok: Joo East’s RM1.6M Hustle
For over two decades, Joo East has been the silent architect behind Malaysia’s vibrant pasar malam and street food scene. Founded in Kuantan by a former pasar pagi trader, the bootstrapped family business fundamentally changed the local landscape - convincing local councils to mandate standardized square canopies and transitioning night markets from messy, makeshift stalls into structured retail h
The Policy & The Pitch: Scaling Angsana Health
In January 2026, Series A digital health company Angsana Health executed a strategic move - they acquired MiyaHealth's subsidiaries and its Managed Care Organization, MiyaCare. This move instantly gave them a network of over 4,000 providers across Malaysia, the Philippines, and Poland. But how does a startup turn a massive legacy network into a modern, data-driven health ecosystem?Angsana Health C
How A Marketing Veteran Turned A "Lonely Mall" Massage Shop Into A 6-Figure Brand
Two years ago, DS Willie Tan left a 20-year career in media advertising to take over Master Ee, an ageing reflexology shop located in a notoriously quiet mall in Petaling Jaya. Within a year, he applied corporate branding and rigorous operational discipline to transform it into a six-figure business with over 1,000 five-star Google reviews.DS Willie joins us to discuss the unglamorous reality of p
Turning iPhone Videos Into A 6-Figure Wedding Empire
When Muns and Pareesha started The Wedding Diaries in 2023, the concept of a "wedding content creator" didn't really exist in Malaysia. Betting on a global cultural shift, the duo left their full-time careers in marketing and advertising to pioneer this new category locally. Fast forward to today, they have bootstrapped a highly profitable, six-figure business in a single year entirely through org
How Decube Is Unblocking Enterprise AI
Major enterprises are rushing to deploy AI, but many are hitting a brick wall: their underlying data is a mess. AI is only as smart as the context it’s given, and without proper data lineage, ownership, and quality controls, enterprise AI initiatives are doomed to stay in the experimental phase. Enter Decube. Founded by Jatin Solanki, Decube is building the "context layer" for enterprise data—a pl
Is Regenerative Business Just A Luxury? A 50,000km Quest For The Truth
Is "regenerative business" a practical reality, or just an ESG buzzword? Benjamin Parent decided to find out by doing something extreme: quitting his corporate job to cycle from France to Japan. His project, Trees on the Way, is a three-year global expedition to interview 21 "regenerative" entrepreneurs who are actively redesigning capitalism to respect planetary boundaries. Operating on a model i
From Hipster Tea To RM3 Million: WonderBrew’s Mass Market Formula
For years, kombucha was dismissed as a niche, "hipster" health drink. Now, WonderBrew has transformed it into a mainstream Malaysian beverage, scaling from a home kitchen in 2018 to over 2,000 retail touchpoints today. But how do you mass-produce a living, fermenting beverage without compromising its quality—or having it explode on the supermarket shelf?Co-founders Joseph Poh (CEO) and Loke Boon E
12 Studios, 8 Figures, PE-Backed: Inside The Flow Studio
How do you scale "good vibes" & namaste into a sustainable, 8-figure business? On the surface, the boutique fitness industry looks like a beautiful blend of aesthetics, mindfulness, and calm. But underneath that highly curated exterior is a fiercely competitive, operationally intense environment where your core product, the instructor, literally walks out the door every single night.When The F
Can This Startup Democratise Diagnostics?
Advanced diagnostics often remain locked inside centralised laboratories and are technically impressive, but inaccessible to many who need them most. Ablesen is attempting to bridge that gap.Founded by Zainiharyati Mohd Zain and selected as one of the top startups in the 2025 PACE Bootcamp by ARTEM Ventures, Ablesen develops rapid, sensor-based diagnostic platforms designed for deployment beyond t
20 Years, 300 Stores: Inside Coolblog's Post-Founder Era
How does a homegrown, 20-year-old beverage brand survive the influx of massive foreign competitors like Mixue? Coolblog CEO Sueli Lew joins us to unpack the company's evolution from a founder-led business to a private equity-backed franchise empire generating RM70 million in revenue. We discuss their hypermarket strategy, the unit economics of their 300+ stores, and Archipelago Capital Partners' u
Beyond Dead Batteries: The Business Of Roadside Rescue
BateriHub doubled from 100 to 200 branches in a year, promising roadside battery support within the hour. But what does it really take to scale reliability across Malaysia?With over 800,000 vehicles sold in 2025 alone, breakdown scenarios are no longer rare inconveniences. They’re part of everyday mobility. In this conversation, Stanly Ng, General Manager of BateriHub, explains how the company bui
The Growthpro Strategy to Combat Traditional SEOs
Most digital agencies sell rankings and traffic. Growth.pro sells visibility within AI systems.Founder and CEO, Alvin Koay, has built an AI-first SEO agency designed for a world where search engines are no longer the only gatekeepers. Instead of focusing purely on keywords, the company helps brands structure their digital presence for AI citations and measurable commercial outcomes.In this convers
30+ Years Of Serai: Building A 9-Figure F&B Family Biz
Running a restaurant is notoriously brutal. Running one successfully for over three decades is rare. Scaling it into a 9-figure, multi-brand F&B empire, while keeping it entirely in the family, is something else entirely.Founded in 1990 as a single restaurant in Shah Alam, Serai Group has evolved into a hospitality powerhouse behind concepts like Serai, Jibby & Co, and Jibby East Grill, al
Foodie Media: From RM1 A Day To RM75M IPO
From making less than RM1 a day as a Penang food blog, to ringing the bell on a RM75 million ACE Market IPO. Foodie Media’s co-founders share their recipe.In 2016, it was just a side hustle, a simple food blog called Penang Foodie fueled by cents from AdSense. Fast forward 9 years, and that side hustle has transformed into a digital media juggernaut with over 46 million followers across a portfoli
How AquFish Is Turning Fish Farms Smart
Aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing food production sectors, but it’s also exposed to volatility, rising feed costs, water quality risks, and unpredictable climate patterns. AquFish believes artificial intelligence can change that.Founded by Rafiq Razali, AquFish is building AI and machine learning tools designed to help fish farms move from reactive decision-making to predictive operations.
Carsome, But For Car Servicing? ServAuto's RM24M Raise
Would you trust a TikTok live streamer to sell you car servicing? Armed with US$6 million (RM24 million) in recent funding, ServAuto is betting that you will.Co-Founder & COO Phoy Yong Hao unpacks how they are digitalising the traditional workshop ecosystem. The ex-Carsome executive breaks down how ServAuto uses an online-to-offline (O2O) model driven heavily by TikTok live commerce, having al
The Evolution Of Oxwhite
Once known for its 120-day pre-order white shirts, Oxwhite has since evolved into an omnichannel retail brand with physical stores, a broader product range, and fresh capital raised through equity crowdfunding. Co-founder CK Chang joins us to discuss Oxwhite’s shift from online disruptor to retail player, the challenges of scaling beyond a single product, and what the next chapter of growth looks
Using “Tiny Homes” To Build A RM150M Hotel Chain
In 2017, Adrian Chia turned a holiday joke into Big Tiny, a "tiny house" hospitality group that now manages over 1,000 keys across 22 countries.With RM150 million in revenue (2025) and positive cash flow since 2018, the company has big, non-tiny, ambitions ahead. The journey began with SG$200,000 of their own money and a prototype that took six months to build in Adrian’s own garden before being s
15 Clinics and Counting. What’s Next For Kyno?
In Malaysia’s fragmented primary care landscape, Dr. Saifulhaziq Noorman is building something more structured. Through Kyno Primary Care and its 14-clinic Poliklinik Amalmedik network, he’s attempting to scale a healthcare business that blends specialist services with community clinics. And now, he’s raising capital via equity crowdfunding to accelerate that vision.We explore the commercial logic
Pulling The Rug From Tradition
For many heirs in Malaysia’s family businesses, the biggest decision is not how to grow what they inherit, but whether to stay at all. Kelvin Khandhar, a third-generation carpet trader, chose to step away after nearly a decade to start Victoria Carpets from scratch. He joins us to talk about the unspoken pressures of succession, why leaving can feel harder than starting over, and how a new generat
Battery Subscription For Commercial Vehicles?
What if your truck battery never failed again?For a logistics firm, a dead battery is more than just a nuisance, it’s a broken timeline, spoiled cargo, and lost revenue. Dennis Yong, CEO of VXI Crest, is out to eliminate that risk by turning the humble starter battery into a visible, data-driven asset.Through a joint venture called Advanced Accumulators, Dennis is replacing traditional lead-acid b
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