Open For Business

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...

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...

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...

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" 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 bu...

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 conve...

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, a...

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 portfol...

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...

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 a...

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...

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...

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 logi...

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...

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...

Building a catering business is easy to start, and notoriously hard to scale. For Andrew Chee, Founder and CEO of RunningMen Celebrations Group, the challenge wasn’t just serving good food, but building a system that could deliver consistency, creativity, and reliability at scale. In this episode, Andrew breaks down how RunningMen grew from a student-run venture into a multi-format halal catering...

In an industry often defined by high-speed logistics and international imports, Brenda James of Nook Flowers is carving out a different path in Malaysia. Known for her "Grown Not Flown" philosophy, Brenda joins us to discuss the intricacies of "Responsible Floristry", from championing local Cameron Highlands growers to championing circular based systems. We dive into the business logic behind her...

From a single kiosk to beating Starbucks and becoming Malaysia’s largest coffee chain in just 6 years. The journey began just months before the pandemic in 2019. Today, ZUS Coffee has cemented the "App-to-Cup" model as the new industry standard, overtaking the legacy giant by outlet count. Venon Tian, Group COO of ZUS Coffee, joins BFM Open For Business to decode the strategy behind the disruption...

Malaysia has top hospitals, competitive pricing, and a strong reputation in medical tourism yet much of the demand is still controlled by foreign intermediaries. Wan Mahsuri Wan Ahmad Kamal, Founder and CEO of Medisuri, an AI-powered medical tourism platform is aiming to reposition Malaysia as a trusted global healthcare hub. We unpack the gap Medisuri is trying to solve, how the business fits int...

What do you do when you’ve built a loyal audience and 5 years of momentum, but you feel trapped by the very niche that built you? Michelle Chin, founder of Her Duit, recently announced a strategic overhaul of her personal finance brand, expanding beyond money into leadership, career, and life design. She joins BFM to deconstruct the mechanics of this pivot and why she refused to let the brand run...