Open For Business

After the announcements that the MCO will be less stringent, it seems like we are edging closer to some form of normality. Yet businesses will still have to adhere to strict guidelines to operate. Going digital will be the key to your business recovery. Surina Shukri, the CEO of MDEC came on the show today to speak about the different initiatives MDEC has under their umbrella and what role does di...

The VH Group is a company group that provides travel-life experiences, and has a few business verticals consisting of homestay, hotels, interior design, and property management. With the inevitable slowdown due to the MCO, they decided to explore the food industry, mainly focusing on helping the small F&B owners and hawkers to gain exposure. Within 14 days they had created VTapau - a food plat...

Alibaba Business School is running a global competition to tap into the skillsets of younger entrepreneurs and business school students. They’ve announced the launch of Alibaba Global E-Commerce Talent (GET) Challenge 2020, aimed at helping businesses and organisations worldwide recover faster and rebound in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. They’ve also issued a challenge to students...

Curlec was founded in 2017 with the vision of providing the Direct Debit payment system to SMEs that have been traditionally underserved by banks. They facilitate transactions by intermediating between the buyers, sellers and their banks, making the process of administering bank-to-bank payments incredibly easy.  They are working to help mitigate the current impact by offering businesses, esp...

UMAI, a startup offering CRM and marketing software to F&B establishments, created a brand new platform designed to get F&B businesses online for deliveries and takeaways at the drop of a hat and for a minimal cost to their clients. Alexander Small, co-founder and managing director, discusses that quick turnaround time, the additional gift card system intended to assist with maintaining ca...

After everything that has happened in 2020, to say the tourism industry has taken a hit would be an understatement; airlines have massively slowed down their operations, borders have been closed or heavily restricted, and most of us can only travel vicariously through nature documentaries.  However, once the MCO is lifted, hopefully the travel bug will bite instead - and most likely, domestic...

Salad Atelier, an eatery offering healthier options than your typical shopping mall cuisine, is not only upping their online presence but has even found a way to offer a new line of products in their fruit and vegetable bundles. We managed to speak to Dylan Lee, founder of Salad Atelier, about how they’re navigating the MCO and their involvement with the #SupportLokal campaign by Alliance Ba...

A steady supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is crucial to lessen the strain on hospitals and medical personnel in the fight against COVID-19. To ensure that masks for high-risk wards are only used by those who need it the most, the local 3D printing community has taken it upon themselves to print face shields to be used in other areas of the hospital. We speak to Adrian Wong, founder of...

Corvan, a home appliance company, is running a Charity Awareness Drive to encourage more donations to Mercy Malaysia, World Vision Malaysia and Malaysian Red Crescent Society from now till the 10th of May 2020, and all donors stand a chance to win products worth more than RM10,000 from Corvan. We managed to speak to Vanessa Tho, co-founder and director of Corvan, about this unique business decisio...

In Malaysia alone, roughly 15 tons of food is wasted per day - and much of that is edible. Grub Cycle saw the opportunity to sell overproduced meals and vegetables from restaurants, farmers and wet markets, at a bargain price to their consumers via their app. All of their products are aligned with their vision to reduce food waste and to save the environment for the future generations. We managed...

Many organisations and celebrities have been using the Instagram LIVE feature to connect with their audiences whilst being on lockdown. RIUH, the monthly creative community bazaar and festival that features local artists and f&b operators, pop-up stores, workshops and more, have too seen a push towards digital as a result of event cancellations.  RIUH In Your Homes is an initiative by the...

In 2019, Oxwhite broke the equity crowdfunding record and became the largest campaign in Malaysia via pitchIN by raising slightly more than RM5 million over the course of 3 weeks. In total, they had attracted 485 investors, with the largest individual crowdfunding investment being just above RM1 million ringgit.  With that, they had aggressive plans for 2020, but as we know, the year didn't q...

The hospitality sector is not having an easy 2020. But some players, like Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa, are rising above industry-wide challenges to not only remain relevant, but support the community and stand in solidarity with our frontliners. We speak with Senior GM Alex Castaldi about putting your best foot forward during a crisis, and how they’re ushering Ramadan and Eid with a twist...

Leverage Lab's Jeevan Sahadevan shares manoeuvres in today's challenging business scene together with his clients, Dr Fauziah Mohd Yunus (Klinik Pergigian Fauziah) and Shafiqah Shafie & Iylia Fahmi (pinkboxcereal.com). Discussing everything from cash flow, leadership, marketing tactics to pivoting strategies; get insights on what you can do now and when MCO ends. This is an extraction of our W...

Leverage Lab's Jeevan Sahadevan shares manoeuvres in today's challenging business scene together with his clients, Dr Fauziah Mohd Yunus (Klinik Pergigian Fauziah) and Shafiqah Shafie & Iylia Fahmi (pinkboxcereal.com). Discussing everything from cash flow, leadership, marketing tactics to pivoting strategies; get insights on what you can do now and when MCO ends. This is an extraction of our W...

In this episode, we hear from Datuk Zainal Amanshah of AECOM (formerly the CEO of InvestKL) on how to assess your business in this crisis and answering questions on local and regional expansion strategies post COVID-19. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With everyone feeling the squeeze from the extended lockdown on their wallets, the big players in the fitness industry have started to report higher membership cancellations, as people reassess where and what they spend their money on. But some gyms are proving to weather this storm better than others. Noel Chelliah, Chief Exercise Officer at DailyMuscle , which provides group fitness classes and...

One entity that’s working really hard to ensure that the repercussions  for SMEs  from the MCO are minimal, is SME Corp Malaysia. SME Corp is the central coordinating agency under the government that coordinates the implementation of development programmes for SMEs, provides business advisory services to them and acts as the central point of reference for research and data dissemin...

KidZania Kuala Lumpur is an interactive learning edutainment theme park for kids to role-playing adult activities and one could imagine even after post-MCO, it would be pretty difficult for them to get back to any sort of previous norm.  We spoke to Shahrul Nizar, the General Manager or Mayor at KidZania.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tanamera is an all natural, plant based health and beauty product range, inspired by remedies and herbs of Malaysia tradition. Mohamad Faisal Ahmad Fadzil, the Managing Director of Tanamera Tropical Spa has been a guest on our shows a couple of times and also a guest speaker on a few of our events.  Faisal is one who truly embraces the local spirit and tradition in his business. We figured it...

Food delivery services have been in the news a lot lately, worldwide. Whilst the global economy slows down, the men and women on motorbikes get what food we want to us fast. But at what cost? We manage to speak with Sayantan Das about the current business model of foodpanda, and what's going to happen when Ramadan gets thrown into that mix. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Ramadan season is just a few days away and while there’s been a lot of conversation about the bazaars and balik kampung activities, a big part of Ramadan is also heading out to the mosque for prayers and practising their faith. But as we all know, the MCO and COVID-19 pandemic has changed this year's Ramadan drastically.   This is again where technology plays a huge role in helping...

According to Unesco, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the education sector around the world with 138 countries forced to close schools and universities. This has affected 1.37 billion children and youth - or nearly 80% of the world’s student population.  Going online doesn’t mean this solves the problem because online education comes with a whole different...

These are unprecedented times for those handling HR. In less than a month, Human Resource leads have had to quickly shift focus from managing the safety of employees in the workplace to remotely managing new realities of pay cuts and retrenchments for business survival. We speak with HR specialists MyWave Sdn Bhd about solutions to the challenges being faced by HR leads today and get some insights...

EPIC Homes builds houses for the Orang Asli community. COVID-19 has halted those plans for the time-being, but that doesn’t mean the company is backing down. With the COVID-19 Alliance for Orang Asli , EPIC continues to aid their community with donations, food, and supplies - to ensure that the Orang Asli are safe and well-stocked during this time. We speak to John-Son Oei, Founder and CEO o...