K: I wore it as a Cape and Pretended to be a SUPERHERO!!
L: This is not MY FIRST SARONG k!
(Taken at the KeretapiSarong flashmob gathering)
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
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(This post was first published on May 12th 2013)
11 years ago, he lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident.
Yet, brother Shuaib still sells Ramli burger beside the train station with his motorcycle-turned-kitchenette.
I asked him, “And you’re still not afraid of riding?”, to which he replied “That’s life, and the risk, of riding a bike. And we just have to move on”.
I order a beef burger with cheese, and tells him I’m still taking my motorcycle driving lessons. He continues, “You know, my other friends and me (who are disabled), even with our predicaments we still ride on with our bikes – we are not scared for something that can and most usually happens”.
“Even if we drive safely, it could be another careless car driver who hits us”.
Shuaib sells burgers late night until the trains stop running, and then moves to another part of the city to cater to hungry people right till 5 in the morning. By this time I finish my burger, I thank him, and he wishes me for the best in my driving examinations.
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
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(This post was first published on December 31th 2012)
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on December 31st 2012)
“My grandfather was the senior assistant commissioner in the police force, which meant that he was the highest ranking Chinese personnel at that time, during the late 1970s.
He was a no-nonsense yet nice and easy going man. He took me traveling, flying me to Hong Kong, because he wanted me to understand there are different types of people out there. I am very close to him and my grandmother, because a lot of the values I carry today came from them.
Back in my 20s when I failed in a family business doing trading, import and export; I went back to Ipoh where my grandparents lived. It has always been a sanctuary for me.
I told grandma all my problems and she told me a story. She said: ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ was a nice saying and I know you are facing a lot of issues but that is not the problem. You just need to take the first step to solve it although the first step might be a mountain.’
She taught me how to look at things smaller, not as a whole but breaking it into smaller pieces. That is when I first heard about making a conscious decision .
I started off my career as a network engineer 15 to 20 years ago. It was a very interesting job because it exposes you to the internet at that time but i was bored to the brink of death because you only talk to machines!
I wanted a career change, a different environment so I got into business. I did it for a couple of years, and thought ‘hey this is fun’ but I failed.
And when you fail, you start to doubt yourself, your ability to make decisions. That was the most emotional moment I had. I was challenged to a point where I hid and cried at a corner because I didn’t know what to do. The lifelines I thought existed no longer exist because they were struggling as well.
I picked myself up, went to networking dinners and met a lot of friends, and I was more honest. You know when you’re in your 20s, you’re egoistic and didn’t want to tell people you failed. I realised that was a mistake because when you don’t tell people what you need, they don’t give you what you need.
One thing led to another and I ended up in Hong Kong doing consultation work, when I realised I had a knack for marketing strategies which I found out in Hong Kong and Singapore.
It just comes along. It depends on the choices along the way. It depends on how you treat the situation along the way.
In late 2014, I joined a friend to start GoCar Malaysia, a tech startup for car sharing platform, where you can use the app to book, unlock & access a car directly from your smartphone, with multiple pickup locations around Malaysia.
I was working in MaGIC at that time, so MaGIC was also the incubator for GoCar. My friend bought his own car to validate the product. Because of MaGIC, we got the connections and the network to market GoCar.
I think we have began to change people’s mindset to understand that there is an alternative to transportation (in Malaysia). There was once an uncle and his family who drove an old Proton Wira and parked at the GoCar parking.
They took out everything including their foods, baju kurung and baju Melayu; packaged it and moved into a GoCar. He was driving the GoCar to ‘balik kampung’ which made sense because if he had drove his rundown old car it might break down half way through. We also had people who made it back in time to their hometowns to see their elders before they passed away.
I think don’t be too harsh on yourself in your career path. Be aware of what is happening around you. Get as much information as possible because sometimes you think you like to do that but once you do that you don’t like it.
Make sure you make a conscious decision when you do something. Don’t just do it because of society or peer pressure.
Gather information and be aware of your choice of what you want to do next and that’s how you make a next move in your career. The world is changing so fast you see, what you think is right now, might not be right 5 years down the road. So how can you predict so far?
The only thing that will save your grace is when you make a conscious decision when you do something. You won’t regret it and go ‘crap someone forced this on me, someone asked me to do this’.
Some decisions i made that time were not very conscious. It was driven by external factors like society, and the need for finances. And that let me to have self-doubt.
When something bad happens, you go all the way back when you made the decision and ask yourself if you had all the information needed, and if you made the right one. If it turns out good, its fine but when it’s not, you start to evaluate yourself – which is not good.
When you had made a conscious decision and something bad happens, do know that you had done all you can, you had all the you information needed, and you did all you could – so c’est la vie, let’s move on.
In the end, I am sure we are on the right path in bringing change. This is my way of contributing to my country and I hope to inspire others to make and create change to our current ecosystem as well.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems! #HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa and Christine Cheah
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on August 2nd 2018)
“My name is Katherine Mendung Anak Embau and I’m 26 years old. I married when I was 19 and had my first child a year later, and my second child last year in 2015. But I’d like to have 5 children. It’s a Sarawakian culture to have many children because they are considered assets. [Laughs]. Most people around here get married around the age of 20, and they would find a job prior to getting married. The youngest mother here is 13 years old, married to her husband who is about 30 something.
The best age to start having children is in your 20s. It’ll be a bit too late and more difficult if you have them in your 30s. There are cases instead where a married couple can’t get children. And it’s not because of contraceptives, but speaking of that, my husband does not like to use a condom.
My children was born in the government hospital about 40 km from here. It would take us about 30 mins or so to reach the city. Of course it would be more helpful if there is a hospital nearer to us. But it is what it is. So we learn to plan our trips during our pregnancy. Like when is the expected time or date for me to go to the hospital.
We only have a motorcycle to move around, not many people have cars here. If we have to go to the clinic, we’d hold our children on the motorcycle – there are ways of holding them (laughs). We’re used to it.”
– Humans of Kuala Lumpur went with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA Malaysia) into the jungles of Sarawak, where they were helping out underprivileged Sarawakians and orang asal in their mission to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
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(This post was first published on July 4th 2018)
“I am from Sungai Siput, a small town in Perak, and furthered my studies in London. I was struggling a lot there – I didn’t know how to speak English and living cost is very expensive. Food is cheap here, but in London its very expensive. I didn’t understand the value of money then.
At one point, when I did my PhD at the Imperial College of London, my wife and I wanted to come back (to Malaysia). We wanted to rent a place near the college but it costs 1000 pounds per month when we only had 850 pounds. We persisted, found a place a bit far off, took the bus and managed to push through.
The four years in London changed me. I learnt how to do many things on a small budget. I watched free movies in the cinema by giving reviews about the movie and managed to watch up to 50 movies every year. I rented a car for 1 pound per day, for 3 days, which allowed me and my wife to tour the UK. I once paid 1 pence for a flight to Portugal. My friends called me the ‘lubang king’. They would come to me and say ‘Hey Yeong, I want to go to Greece, can you give me a good deal?’
I had a culture shock when I came back. When you are in London, everyone wants to do something big. They want to create a company, they want to create a startup. The main difference is, in that part of the world, they have the ecosystem, but here in Malaysia, they don’t.
In Silicon Valley, they have Facebook and Google. University students can look into them for inspiration when they want to start a startup. You go to Korea, you have Samsung, you go to Japan, they have Sony and other companies. Back in Malaysia, its quite hard to find a success story. Right now we have a few, like Grab and The Lorry.
What about tech companies? In 2010, I started to look for an opportunity. The first company that I really wanted to start up is a healthcare robot company, which is my phD subject. I thought it was going to be smooth, because when I was in London, it was quite a smooth ride in dealing with a product, but it was not the case. The ecosystem here is not ready for it yet.
Eventually, I started up DF Automation and Robotics with a few other co-founders.
We build robots that can do specific and autonomous tasks for different purposes, to reduce the need for human labour. One robot can do different tasks so you don’t really have to customize the robot, you just add or change and do different applications.
When I came back from London after finishing my PhD, I had a change of mindset – rather than spending so much time and energy to win competitions, I should focus in developing something that can bring economic value to country for long run. That’s how me and with my two students founded this company. We design and manufacture Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV).
In a production and manufacturing company, components and parts need to travel and be placed in different locations. The parts can weigh up to 500 kg and have to be moved as far as 3km. In Malaysia, we hire low skilled operators, mostly foreigners. We build robots for this purpose, to reduce labour reliance.
As an academic going into business, I had no idea how to do business. So, I started to look for mentors and guidance. In 2012, MaGIC was founded to address the entrepreneurship gap in Malaysia.
I joined their very first programme called MaGIC PitchIN Challenge where you have to pitch for funding from the crowd, and we raised the highest fund, a total of RM 50,000+. We also had to be in MAGIC’s office every 3-4 days.
I had to travel every week to attend these powerful courses and syllabuses, even getting to learn how to measure your business – when it’s not even up yet.
They helped me to grow the business, mentorship guideline and also providing a platform by gathering all the entrepreneurs, like Anthony Tan from Grab (MyTeksi) last time.
And for us, the future is AI (artificial intelligence). We want to be the first AI company in this region.
When you order from a sushi restaurant, the chef makes but the robot serves you. In Korea, a BBQ restaurant uses 8 robots to serve to 80 tables. Now we are working to go kopitiam in Malaysia.
I hope DF can grow big and successful, and hopefully; it can inspire academicians and students to venture to entrepreneurship and commercialise the research outcome in universities.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems! #HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Christine Cheah
Edited by Amalina Davis and Mushamir Mustafa
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on July 22nd 2018)
“When I was about 10, I used to help my father sell pisang goreng and cakoi for a living. That’s how I first learned about business.
My family was always into ‘berniaga’ (selling). My family’s environment was all about business, business, business. Kerja is still kerja but mindset is all about the business. And I had to learn all of that when I was young.
And where first year university students would usually be ‘lepaking’, I challenged myself to do new things. If people don’t do it, I want to try and do it myself. So, I started designing t-shirts and made it as a preorder business on Facebook groups. After that, I went on to developing websites for clients, then app development and after that game development.
And the fact is, I didn’t even want to do computer science when I was in university. It was my 5th choice. My first choice was Architecture.
If you understand ‘hikmah’, this best describes where I am today.
At that time, I didn’t even have my own computer. So when I got my fifth choice in my university, I felt down.
It was only after starting the course that I learned about programming, like C++ and other softwares, and that’s when I fell in love with computer science.
So you see – sometimes when you don’t get what you want but you get something else in return, something that’s for you – that is ‘hikmah’.
And now computer science has become my ‘rezeki’. It lead me to what is considered my first tech startup, RunCloud, where we are a middle man to help web developers simplify their task in the configuration and management of websites. A control panel to automate the configuration process.
Within three months of launching our software in 2017, we were featured as the top most viewed community project in Digital Ocean.
A year later, we joined the MaGIC Global Accelerator Program. They have helped us tremendously in digital marketing and connecting us to mentors, and this has helped in our business growth.
And we now manage over 35,000 domains with 6000 connected servers across 80 countries with an 80 percent of our clients from Europe and Americas with our staffs covering different time zones.
As you can see, I believe that everyone can start their own business. To start, is easy. There’s plenty of ideas. But to maintain it? Partners fighting, businesses not making enough money – if your business can survive for 3 years, that is a great marking point.
Not bad for someone who wanted to be an architect, interested in ‘lukisan kejuruteraan’, and whose university degree choice for computer science ws only his fifth choice!”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems! #HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Christine Cheah
Edited by Amalina Davis Mushamir Mustafa
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on July 21st 2018)
(2/2) “An important life lesson that my mom taught me is to keep staying positive. One thing about her is her infectious positivity – even when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer, she kept on saying ‘you know what? I am okay and I will be okay’. We all know the survival rate for cancer is very low, but now she is recovering. Of course we don’t know what will happen in the future, but because of her positivity, it has brought her through it all.
She was suffering so much from cancer. She was in so much pain and discomfort but she never bothers us about it.
She would always say ‘nevermind, just go do your work, don’t worry about me, I am okay’. She tries to stay as independent as she can. We really appreciate our mother’s effort, she is the one always pushing us to do better and tell us not to be contented with a 9-5 job. It made me want to achieve bigger things.
Growing up as a kid, I always dreamt of making a change and contribute to the society in my own tiny way. It is all influenced by my mother. She is the most important woman in my life. She is a very strict mom and she always teach me to respect others and to help others. She is my inspiration from when I was young until up to this day.
The life lessons that she taught me has been useful for running my own startup. We always go through ups and downs – in fact, we always go through more downs than ups.
What people see on social media are always half the truth. Most of the time they don’t see what is behind the scene – all the shouting and arguments. Always be positive and look at things from different angles. That’s how you can fix your mind and go through these issues, one step at a time.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems! #HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Samantha Siow
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa and Amalina Davis
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on July 19th 2018)
(2/2) “I worked in China for 8 years, 5 of which was spent in Microsoft. My job in Microsoft was very stable with good pay. Not only that, it is a great company with products impacting the world. So when people ask me why I decided to come back to Malaysia, I told them it was for my two kids. I felt very strongly in bringing them back to grow up as Anak Malaysia.
I was born and raised in KL. Growing up in Malaysia, I had so many lovely memories here; the padang that I played in, the childhood friends and of course the food. We Malaysians are hopeless food lovers.
But the most unique is the diverse multiracial culture we have. I want my kids to grow up in this diversity and understand the differences between different people. I always thought that Malaysia is a great place to bring up children.
I married a Malaysian, and she moved with me to China. After 8 years in China, we were debating on a thousand things on what to do. If I continued building my career in Microsoft, should we go to Seattle, Microsoft’s HQ, but we felt that it was too far from Malaysia.
I’m a guy who loves challenges and startups. I used to have a very stable job and comfortable life, so why do this to my wife and kids? Thankfully my wife is very supportive and helps me take care of the family.
For a married person with two kids like me, the entrepreneurship journey is very very tough. You need to work the balance and harmony with family.
Family always comes first. With kids and without kids is very different life. With kids, you have to give up a lot of your personal entertainment. Say goodbye to your online games, your football matches at mamak.
Life is a lot of decisions to be made – no one has a crystal ball to see the future. Everything is a journey. If you chose the journey to start a business, make sure you are well prepared for it.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems! #HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Amalina Davis
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on July 14th 2018)
(1/2) “I started off as an engineer, and have worked in corporate finance, IPOs, and even the sales line – so what was next? I wanted to do something that could change the world. At that time I naively thought, of joining a Silicon Valley startup – go to the US – and join Google or Microsoft. So I blindly applied to do an MBA in Stanford University – and was rejected.
Life is like a box of chocolates. A month after the rejection letter, I got interviews from Microsoft, Google and a few venture capitals. Eventually I decided to join Microsoft in China. Microsoft‘s HQ is in Seattle, but they have two big R&D centres in India and China.
I joined China’s engineering team on Microsoft Office, starting from Outlook, to Office Android, to Sharepoint Online. Sharepoint was the fastest selling Microsoft product ever.
They hired thousands of engineers for China. China has a big talent pool – every year China is producing 7 million graduates, the majority are engineering students. That’s the talent pool that they have the luxury of tapping from. I will always remember HR telling me, how they hired 1 person out of 2000 candidates.
A lot of people complain about the lack of talent pool in Malaysia. Last time we used to have a lot of Malaysians who are top students in universities abroad. But when they come back to Malaysia, its hard for them to find job opportunities where they can learn.
If there are more big tech organizations like Microsoft, Google and Amazon or well-funded local startups like Grab and Lazada – setting up global product engineering teams here in Malaysia, it will bring world-class engineering practice, that will nurture the local talent pool and subsequently benefit the local startup ecosystem.
This is exactly what happened in China 20 to 30 years ago. When Microsoft moved to China, it took them about 20 years to build up the talent pool. At the very beginning, they only employed junior engineers from China, whilst senior engineers were brought over from the US.
The senior engineers will nurture the junior engineers. In a few years time, the juniors became a strong middle layer. The middle layers came out and joined forces with the likes of Alibaba and Baidu, and continue to nurture homegrown startups.
Luckily, I managed to pull one of my colleagues from Microsoft China to start up a software business together. That’s how Kakitangan.com started.
We wanted to build softwares previously only available to big corporate companies, for smaller companies. Kakitangan.com automates HR (Human Resources) operations such as leave submissions and payroll operations, so the staff can spend more time building their business and their people.
In smaller companies, HR spend most of their time doing payroll and leave applications. These are the kind of things you should use software to automate, and let your staff focus on the important work – how to keep employees engaged, how to keep employees improving.
If 3 years down the road, we help Malaysian SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises) become 10{eb97150a49149dc6c9e8165e90f1c9129bb6172e02a598b4264a1fc329d7d5bc} or 20{eb97150a49149dc6c9e8165e90f1c9129bb6172e02a598b4264a1fc329d7d5bc} more efficient, that’s a relatively good contribution to the country.
Agencies like MaGIC has helped us grow, by introducing us to other startups that eventually became our clients. By joining the ASEAN Accelerator track, we also made friends with startups from the rest of Southeast Asia, which we still keep in touch until today. It even taught us how to explore and move the business to other countries.
That’s how I hope to contribute to a better Malaysia, by bringing international world class engineering knowledge to Malaysia, due to our experience as founders of a software company, where we can help build Malaysia’s talent pool. I always tell my colleagues, the future is not talked out, the future is built out. The future is built by you, one step at a time.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems!#HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Amalina Davis
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa
Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8
(This post was first published on July 14th 2018)
