Tag: MaGIC

“Because Malaysians like to dress like someone else. This example may be a bit offensive but a lot of women like to dress like Vivy Yusof or any other celebrity.

They like to dress like someone. But the thing is, the people they want to dress like doesn’t share the same physique, skin tone, height, etc. Unless you have a physique like a celebrity, you can dress like them but most of us don’t look like a celebrity. That is a fact we need to realise. 

And instead of looking like a celebrity, dress according to what is best to your physique or personality. For me is not about the expensive things but the variety.

My passion is not in Fashion per se. My passion is in creativity. I think Malaysians don’t have the same level of creativity like Indonesians. 

When I say Indonesians, I don’t mean all Indonesians but maybe the creative side. That’s why I believe in terms of the film industry, Indonesians are way ahead of us. Not in cinema but the films. I think Malaysians are not creative. Not everyone. 

There are creative people but we like to copy. I think the issue with Malaysians is that one – we like to copy. Two – we like to do the trendy things. The problem with copying and doing the trendy things doesn’t mean that it fits you. 

The link or the linkage that we are trying to create with Ombré is the link between your clothes and you. Ombré is a fashion stylist software. The software aims to give clothing or fashion suggestion to our users – to tell them what to wear based on their physique. 

That’s why our tagline is: Dress Like Yourself. For us, clothes are the extensions of ourselves. So when it is the extension of ourselves, you can’t just wear something based on some other people. 

For example, if I don’t look like David Beckham, I shouldn’t wear like David Beckham even though David Beckham is my style icon. What I do is, I follow his style but I change the colour. 

For one thing our skin tone is different. David Beckham has a cool skin tone whereas I have a warm skin tone. Our bodies are also different. 

The point is there should be a linkage between the wearer and the clothes. I think Malaysians don’t care about this. That’s why if there is a trend, for example, the varsity jacket trend. I get the trend but you shouldn’t wear that outdoors in the afternoon because you’re in Malaysia. 

So always remember that there is linkage between ourselves and our clothes. I think Malaysians need to remember that. But if it is hard for them, just use Ombré. 

I think the philosophy behind starting Ombré is that: we believe that fashion, before this, is seen as exclusive. If you’re rich or if you have a certain physique, then you can be fashionable. We want to tell people that fashion is not exclusive. Anyone can be fashionable regardless of your body shape and regardless of your income. 

But I think what the problem that the majority of people have before this is that how can they be fashionable without hiring fashion stylists which cost around RM500 or USD500 per day. Unless they are very well knowledgeable in fashion, it is hard for them to be fashionable. But we aim to solve that. 

Our software is not catered to the fashionable – it’s catered to the fashion conscious or fashionably clueless crowd, which is the majority. 

We needed to do a scalable business and we decided with several ideas. But we see that fashion is the way to go because no one is doing that.

We are the world’s first fashion styling software that is patented. Our future plans is to expand to other countries. Right now, about 20{eb97150a49149dc6c9e8165e90f1c9129bb6172e02a598b4264a1fc329d7d5bc} of our users are Americans even though we don’t market to America.

We are of course thankful of Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) because of the programme. We went to Silicon Valley. It was only for 3 weeks, and I learned more in those 3 weeks than learning 6 months in Malaysia. So we took that opportunity to continue fundraising and finally found investors.

I think the number 1 advice took dearly after we came back from Malaysia was when we met a CEO of a start-up named Kenny Hock. 

He taught me that: don’t tell me the problem, don’t give me an excuse. Find a way to get what it is that you need and want. 
When visiting Facebook’s HQ, I noticed that there wasn’t any Facebook branding at all except for the light logo at the front. 

Previously, this was Sun Microsystems’ HQ and their branding was still there in Facebook’s current HQ! We asked the tour guide why is Sun Microsystems’ still here and they said, “Mark (Zuckerberg) wanted to remind us that Sun Microsystems’ used to be an icon in Silicon Valley – but they died. So don’t be complacent because you can die.”

This was a ‘wow’ moment for me because it is the opposite here (in Malaysia). The culture is deep branding and putting the logo everywhere. I’m not saying that it is wrong, I’m saying that this is the other part of how people decorate their office.

The other one is there is a lot of word “hack” in Facebook issue. Even their address is 1 Hackaway I think? Why hack? They said, “our culture is hacking. 

Although the word “hack” has a bad connotation like computer hacking. It doesn’t mean that. 

“Hack” is more like you want something but you can’t do it in conventional means so you need to hack it out.” “the best definition of an entrepreneur is those who can create something out of something he doesn’t have” 

And since I was in Standard 2 I had this urge of doing something and I love my work when it is appreciated. 
For example in Standard 2, I used to draw Digimon on a piece of paper and photocopied it and sold it for RM0.20. 

It wasn’t the matter of getting RM0.20. It was a matter of validation. 

It was the matter that people were willing to pay RM0.20 for your work. It means that people are appreciative of your work. Again, it’s not that I want to be rich at the time. 

It’s more of doing something that people want. I think I really like to create something that people don’t know that they want it. So I think that is my life philosophy.

My one thing is disrupting. When I say disrupting is not necessarily disruption – it is disrupting people, disrupting things. That is my one thing. Meaning if someone is doing something, when I come in, I want to do something different. I would disrupt that process. 

Even when I am old, I would still want to disrupt things. That is my one thing. And Ombré, is my one thing. 

Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa

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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian 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

(This post was first published on August 12th 2018)

“I felt like it was not fair that my friends who were genuinely richer were able to go overseas. The other friends got scholarships. I got 8 A1s and 1 C5 (for Bahasa Malaysia), but I just couldn’t get a scholarship. So I took action on my own hands.

I went to government embassies and looked for all the addresses of universities around the world. I wrote to universities like Harvard and Princeton, and said, ‘Please give me a scholarship. I am very good, I play football and represented my school for a lot of competitions. You will be very stupid if you don’t give me a scholarship.’ I said it in a nice way la (laughs).

At that time, my father was working in the government and he got an award for me doing well in SPM. I got RM100 per A1, so I got about RM800. I thought, must do something more productive with this money. So instead of buying stuff, I bought stamps to send the letters, and spent the rest of it to take my SATs and TOEFL exams. 

I did really well for my SATs – I got 800 for Maths and 640 for English. I got early entrance into Princeton and Georgetown Universities, with a small 25{eb97150a49149dc6c9e8165e90f1c9129bb6172e02a598b4264a1fc329d7d5bc} scholarship. 

Eventually, I got a full scholarship from Bridgeport University, covering tuition fees, food and lodging. I got the letter on December 22nd, and school started on January 4th. So I dropped Form 6, asked my father for a few thousand dollars, and flew off to the US. 

The scholarship was given by the university. They gave 10 scholarships to each country, all 160 countries, so it was like a mini United Nations (UN).

The Chinese gave the scholarship to the top 10 students from top Chinese universities including Peking university, so they were super smart kids. But some of the Africans nations were different – some were corrupt, giving the scholarships to the government officials’ kids.

I knew the Sudanese Finance Minister’s kid, and then 6 months later, he said that his father was killed in a coup d’etat. Another one of my classmates were Sharon and Fatima Mugabe, the Mugabe sisters from Zimbabwe. At that time, Robert Mugabe was still a freedom fighter. 

From a young age, me and my best friends always wanted to do crazy stuff and somehow managed to get away with it. 

For example, we didn’t have a padang to play football, so we looked around and found a padang. We cleared the land together, and we told our friends to go steal grass from their house. Don’t have a cangkul? We lent them a cangkul. We did all of that just so we can have grass on the padang to play football. 

In hindsight, I realised it has helped teach us little lessons in leadership. I had to influence 20 boys to steal grass from their own house. In a way, I was creating a followership. Part of being a leader is to create followers. You have to cast a vision for them, like ‘when we have this padang, we can play football anytime we like.’ 

I don’t know what I was doing at that time – I was just a kid trying to convince them just to get things done, because i just want a football field. But that starts to teach you, that you need to learn storytelling, you need to put things in perspective, you need to tell the story of the future in order to be a leader. Because when they see the future, they are more willing to put the effort. 

That’s called visioning. That’s part of our science of building leaders in Leaderonomics. 

Leaderonomics started when I was helping underprivileged kids in Sabah and Sarawak through giving leadership camps. It was quite interesting, because not only were these kids impacted as individuals, but the communities that they lived in also had significant impact. 

I wondered, why can’t we take this and make it a bigger version? If we take one person, and impact the community that they live in, their leadership will spread and create a great community of love. And that is how Leaderonomics was born. It is simply an initiative to help every single person become the leader that that they were meant to be.” 

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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian 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 August 12th 2018)

“Their income per day was only four to five ringgit, and we have nine family members. That money was not enough to cover everybody in the family, so we struggled a lot.

I learned rubber tapping from my dad. Every school holidays or weekends, all of us had to help our parents collect rubber. We used to have to sacrificeour free time – instead of playing around with our friends, we had to go to the ladang. Sometimes early in the morning, as early as 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. It was very dark too, so we had to use special torches to see.

There was this one time, where me, my younger brother and my father went tapping. There was a pool of buffaloes nearby. Suddenly, a buffalo ran straight towards my younger brother. We all had to run like crazy from it! We survived and escaped, of course.

I didn’t really enjoy rubber tapping as a child, because of course I’d rather play around with friends. But it’s something we had to do to contribute to our family. 

To learn rubber tapping is not simple. You need to learn about the tools, which needs to be sharpened and wrapped in a cloth, since it can be dangerous. When you start tapping, it can be very dark, so you have to use a special carbide torch. You have to cut the tree properly, otherwise the tree bark will be spoiled. 

After cutting the trees, you have to wait for the rubber to stop, then put a chemical to make it hard, before you can sell it to the shop. It’s pretty smelly too, it can smell up to 3 or 4 days. 

I didn’t get paid for helping my dad, because we knew that the money being earned by my parents was not enough. They just gave us some pocket money for school. We used to get 20 sen each, for us to makan at sekolah. 

During my time, 20sen wasn’t enough, because normally the mee or nasi was 20 sen. So when I buy that, I have to go to the water pipe to drink. In the canteen, a plate of mee would be 20 sen. But outside, it would go up to one ringgit. We couldn’t afford that so we wouldn’t eat. Sometimes, my friends would offer their meals to us when they saw we weren’t eating. 

I was a naughty boy during childhood. Sometimes, after school, we would go to the river to swim. One day, I threw a stone to my friend, and it hit him, so he reported it to my dad. My dad was angry at me and slapped me a couple of times. That’s one of the things that I can still remember, until now. 

During those days, being a naughty boy, being lazy, you just stay in your own dilemmas and your own world. Things like that was a trigger point, telling me I needed to change – study hard and do something to be proud of. I wanted to be able to give something to my family.

I think my turning point was when I was in standard six and had to study very hard. Being from a poor family, to study hard is not easy, because you struggle with things like getting a reference book. Even to buy a book was not easy, and sometimes, I had to borrow books from my friends. They even got angry at me every now and again.

I was the first one in my family to go to university. I did computer science in Universiti Putra Malaysia and now, I am the founder of JomParking.

JomParking is a mobile app that allows users to pay for parking using a smartphone. It’s a platform that provides the solution for either local councils or parking operators. Right now, to pay for parking, you have to buy the book of coupons or go to the parking machine. Its very inconvenient, especially for those who aren’t from that area. 

For example, I’m from Johor and coming to Sepang. To make a payment for the parking, I have to buy one book of coupons which is ten pieces, and I would only maybe use one or two. 

The rest I have to keep in my car and it expires eventually, so it’s a lot of wastage, for both the consumers and the council. JomParking app also sends an alert fifteen minutes before the parking expires. You can add more time to extend the parking, making it convenient. 

How an enforcement officer knows whether or not you’ve paid, since there’s no physical proof of payment like a ticket, is by scanning the vehicle plate number. The system will then tell the officer whether you’ve paid or not. For those who haven’t paid or expired, enforcement will issue a summon.

So far, the response has been very good, especially in KL. You know, in Malaysia it’s very hot, so its a hassle for you to go to the parking machine. This solution is helpful. We almost have 100,000 users already.

Jom Parking is my proudest achievement. I managed to create my own company and now we have 14 members. I joined a four month MaGIC program called GAP (Global Accelerator Program) last year. We learned a lot, like how to manage a proper company, starting from a pitch to potential investors to doing proper financing and business plans. 

I think Malaysia has very good talent, that’s why more and more entrepreneurs go into start-ups. I believe we have a lot of talent, but we lack a lot of things like funding, direction and business strategy. 

Sometimes, they are good at one part, like maybe technical, but they lack in other things. That’s why we need agencies like MaGIC that help these startups.

Looking back, if I could change anything from my childhood I would change my family status. If possible I would want to be from a rich family, where you can get whatever you want when you want it. 

I remember in those days, during Hari Raya we wouldn’t always get new clothes, so we would have to wear last year’s clothes. If I could change that, I would at least have everyone in the family have new clothes. 

I’m married and have kids now, and if this project fails, I would have to go back to my hometown as in the villages, the cost of living is much lower than living in KL and do something, like farming – or who knows, rubber tapping (laughs). 

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Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa and Amalina Davis

Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8

Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian 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

(This post was first published on August 4th 2018)

 

“My mother said “if you want to study any course, you would need to handle it (financially) by yourself.” There was a lot of pros and cons to this kind of upbringing.

The pros: she gave us freedom in doing anything we want. Meanwhile the cons: we have to do everything by ourselves. 

I think that’s how people become more aggressive; you need money to survive. You need to be aggressive to get what you want.

Growing up in high school, I was busy working part time as a promoter, a gift sampling employee to selling minyak kilat – I did any job that can give me money. 

By being aggressive, you get what you work for. If you are hardworking enough, you will get at least something in return. The secret to getting where I am today would be to ‘put in effort’.

My mother’s ways taught me to be accountable in everything that you do – for your own life. 

If you want to have a bright future or a better life, then do it yourself. 

That’s the biggest lesson for me. I never resent my mother for bringing me up that way. I am thankful. 

Growing up, I have seen people who have such protective parents that the individuals are afraid in making a decision. Afraid of failure. Or those who talk about how big their idea is but never execute it. 

When my father passed away and the situation was as such, I was scared of the future. I felt insecure. To be honest, I am still insecure today. However, my childhood has taught me to work even harder to this very day.

We grew up in Ampang in one of the low cost flats there and my late father was a businessman, a contractor who renovated a hospital, until he lost a lot of money due to guarantor disputes. 

When he passed away, my mother was a housewife and had to find work, earning RM400 a month. 

I went on to study part time, got a PTPTN loan and immediately started working as a Salesperson – a Personal Banker. I was really aggressive and it resulted me in getting the Rookie Award within 2 months. 

My good performance got me headhunted to work at a bank in Singapore, and when I first got my salary in Singapore, I sent back almost all the money to Malaysia. I left a very small portion for myself. 

Sometimes I feel what I have accumulated wasn’t good enough. Maybe it is a weakness of mine because I always thought it wasn’t good enough, and that I need to work harder because I can do better.

I regret staying in corporate for too long, because after that, I started an events company with the tagline: ‘Beautify your happiness”, and later on, started ChubbeeCloud, when I realized people were always looking for a unique gift to give to their guests. 

I realized the gifting industry in Malaysia was very boring, giving gifts like flowers, printed shirts, and mugs – and I thought, ‘why don’t we do something creative?’ 

Something that can be personalized, takes thought to create – and can be eaten too.

So marshmallows it was. We make customisable, printed marshmallows using edible ink – customized boxes for everything from corporate gifts, to little birthday treats and even proposals.

And we hope to create a culture of thoughtful gifts amongst Malaysians.

Once we got the idea, we executed. No point to talk and think some more. 

During that time I joined Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre Global Accelerator Programme (GAP) whose experienced mentors helped me to look at the bigger picture, how to add value to my business, how to engage with your audience and in digital marketing and shared different business strategies. 

I always believe that everyone of us needs to create more income. You can’t depend on just one income. My advice to other entrepreneurs out there: execution, execution, execution.

And looking back, the biggest gift that I had ever received was from my late brother who passed away when I was 19 years old. 

He died of cancer within 2 weeks when we all found out he had cancer. It was too sudden. 2 weeks is a very short time. He underwent chemotherapy but there was a lung infection and died from it. Its like he just disappeared. 

I find that if you don’t treasure your loved ones, you will regret it one day. I miss everything about him until today. 

It has been 15 years but he was a very loving person and took care of all of us very well. 

He got our backs when we were growing up together with our tough situation. 

Right before he passed away, my brother spoke to my second eldest brother. He said: “use the insurance funds for us younger siblings to further our studies”. 

And if I could go back in time and tell him something – it would be “I love you”.

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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

Do you have a story? Let us know here: https://forms.gle/ht4HsvbxgSgcKS5h8

(This post was first published on July 29th 2018)

“For something that is more hard and stones such as engineering, it is either a 1 or a 0. It is definite. That’s why I find advertising far more challenging.

I’m also quite the perfectionist. I strive to please the maximum amount of people I can, that’s why it is easier to find joy in advertising. 

Throughout my career, I have met a lot of people. Especially in my position – I interview many people, including fresh graduates. I think graduates should have the right to know what they are signing up for, but I’m sure no one told them. That was my observation.

For mid level or senior management who want to step up their career, there’s no one actively guiding them, telling them what they should be doing. A lot of it comes from pure assumptions, or they see someone else doing it and they jump into it. They think, ‘Oh it looks like a nice job and I want to apply for it!’, without the knowledge that I need to have so and so skills. 

I find that there is a mismatch in terms of what they can offer versus what their end goal is. That mismatch is a huge gap creating a big problem in my industry. People have big aspirations and goals but they do not know how to get there. They want to fill big shoes. 

That’s why I signed up to mentor someone interested in the industry. I want to tell them the harsh reality that they have to do this first. Otherwise, I would be wasting a lot of my time interviewing people, telling them they are not there yet. 

When I speak to my friends, a lot of them face the same problems – there’s not enough talent out there or all these talents just need someone to guide them. Especially when someone graduates, there is no teacher anymore. Who is there to tell them, you need to do A-B-C-D-E in order to achieve F?

The most common I meet are the ones that want the highest position, with the highest monetary reward, but with the lowest possible involvement. Some want to be CEO or start a startup, but zero idea on how to do it. 

They see the end goal, but not the struggle. Its painful when you speak to them. 

A lot of people I speak to, they say, let them go and try, let them fall so that they learn, but why?

Why do you want to make people suffer? Why don’t guide them to tell them the next step?

Instead, we should give them positive guidance. Most importantly, tell them the reality to achieve something, rather than letting them try and fail.”

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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is working with FutureLabto feature their team of inspiring mentors. Follow us to get to know more on their mentors. To learn more about FutureLab’s online mentoring platform or to connect with Jenifer, please visit futurelab.my.

Jenifer Alicia Ooi is a director of a renowned advertising agency based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Photostory by Christine Cheah
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa and Amalina Davis

(This post was first published on July 28th 2018)

“Users can book a hairstylist, masseuse or manicurist, anytime, anywhere. We are always looking to create value for our customers, by offering off-peak deals and points collection for item redemptions.

Convenience is what we look for, but at the end of the day, Asians are Asians, we always look for what’s valuable for money. If we go online, we expect to find cheaper and better deals from existing salons. 

And I had no idea about grooming, I only knew how to groom myself, but not others. 

I wasn’t connected to anyone in the industry except for my co-founder (who was founder of A Cut Above).

I was mostly interested in the tech side.The first 6 months we had no clue how to build a prototype, a website, and my other cofounder used to think MVP (minimum viable product) stands for most valuable player. 

What really struck me was this makeup artist who I came to know about. She was from Teluk Intan, and she was being abused by the employer, physically and financially. 

For her makeup, she would only make RM15 from charging RM120. She said she wanted a profile but she didn’t know how to go about it. 

We listed her in WeStyleAsia, she grew her business, participated in our events, and now she’s a personal makeup artist to the likes of Fazura and Ning Baizura. 

I’m really happy to see where she is now. This is the change we are making to ordinary Joes and Janes on the street. 

In my entrepreneurship journey, Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre has helped me understand how to run a business on technology, from validation all the way to human psychology. The pinnacle of my startup education was when I went to Silicon Valley under MaGIC’s programme. 

Being in San Francisco and meeting all the top guns, that was simply brilliant. MaGIC was the true backbone of where WeStyleAsia is today. 

The trick is not to be a unicorn – it’s to be a uniroach. A cockroach that can survive anything that later on becomes a unicorn. 

When I’m in my down period and having self doubt, I always remember why I first started. 

It was simply to empower people to look great and stay confident. I came from the entertainment industry where people are superficial – there’s a lot of beautiful people out there, but because they can’t exude the confidence out to people, they are disregarded. 

And with fashion, people judge you the way you dress, the way you talk. So I wanted Westyleasia to be a portal, that when you go to the portal, you become a much more confident person. To educate people to look good, to take care of yourself. 

And constantly reminding yourself that looking good isn’t about vanity – it’s about respecting people”.

(Part 2/2)
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian 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 26th 2018)

“I was the ‘pelajar cemerlang’ at 12, completed my Grade 8 piano and violin at 15, and was the youngest conductor of the orchestra at 16. I dare say I had a deprived childhood and was angry at her for a long time.

My mom was the runner up for Miss Universe Malaysia in 1977. She’s half German, but when it comes to money, she’s very Asian. She saw a talent in me and set a high benchmark. Since I responded well, she thought I enjoyed it and was even more gungho towards me. 

I grew up around the entertainment industry. There was this audition for babies where the first one who crosses the Finishing Line would get the main role, as simple as that. 

For two weeks my mom would train me 2 hours daily. On the audition day, there were 50 babies. When all babies were crying and zigzagging, I crawled straight to victory. 

So that’s how I scored my first job, and it paid me a couple of thousand dollars. 

At the age of 4, my mom would just leave me to hang out with the TV producers and cameraman, while she did her own stuff. That trained me to be really independent. 

After a while, I wasn’t sure if being in entertainment was satisfying my needs or satisfying her needs – because she used to boast to her friends when I appeared on news and TV commercials. 

The reality only started to hit when I was a teenager. I felt like I didn’t have the freedom, and music especially felt like a chore. It was all about serious stuff and I lost the enjoyment. At 14, I became rebellious. 

It became darker after I finished high school. I felt like all of this is finally done, and its time for me to really have my own life. At that time, when my parents told me to do anything or challenged me, I would just walk out from the house and won’t come back for a week.

Of course, now that I’ve grown up, I realized all parents just want the best for their kids. 

The turning point for me was when I went to a leadership course, and they asked a question, ‘‘In the event that you leave this world earlier than your parents, what would you want your parents to say to you at your funeral?’ 

That question triggered me. I realized that I will miss my parents, especially my mom, a lot. 

In my 20s, when I was working hard, I used to shut down my mom’s call. I was easily agitated by her. Moms are just being moms, they want to just make conversation. 

My moms a storyteller, so she just loved telling stories. She would make every call sound so urgent, at that time there’s no Whatsapp, so everytime she would call me, even at the office. 

So when I read that question, if my parents were gone from my life, I would actually miss all these calls and random stories that she used to share. 

Even though I never got to express how I love them through words, most of it was through my actions. 

When I look back at the past, from primary school, to high school, I always took the road less traveled. 

My parents have always given me an unspoken kind of support. They don’t put pressure on me to give them allowance on a monthly basis, which I still feel very horrible for. 

When I was bootstrapping on my own, I didn’t even pay myself a salary for 14 months. 

Deep down inside, I know that whatever they put me through has really moulded me into who I am today. And I cannot thank them enough for that”. 

(Part 1/2, stay tuned for the second part of the story!)

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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian 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 26th 2018)

“Growing up with him, and being the youngest in the family, usually we are normally the ‘pampered’ ones, but not in my case.

I was taught the harsh way to live independently. I was 12 when my dad and aunt had a big fight, and it was my aunt who took care of me since I was born. Hence, I had to wake up early to go school and prepare my own lunch, take the bus on my own – I felt demotivated on why my mom and dad spent more time with my brother, and not me. I felt loss. 

I used to ask myself, ‘Why do my parents love my brother more?’ And I could never understand why. 

Then in Form Two, I had the chance to go on an exchange program to Japan and that changed my perspective in life, and changed my perspective to think of others. I learned manners and lived in a different, rigid culture there. In Malaysia we have school cleaners but in Japan, you have to clean up yourself. 

In my first week at the school there, we had to clean the garden, the second week was the classroom, and the third week, the toilet. 

From all of this, it made me more independent, even in university compared with the other students who ask money from their parents as I tried to find ways to earn money like doing businesses and selling sandwiches. . 

Also, because of this experience, I always make sure that I keep the toilet clean – so that my friends who will be cleaning the toilet after don’t have to do much work. I learned to think about others, and if my basic necessities are fulfilled, I can help other people. 

From there on, in university I started the Youth Entrepreneur Society, and won a national competition for our business idea and flew to San Francisco for it, received funding from Cradle Fund, but it failed in the end, a year later due to the lack of belief in the team. 

When I started my second startup (on teaching confinement ladies), the startup also did not last due to disagreements within the team on how to run the business. 

Cloudbreakr is my third startup. Despite failing two startups before this, I still believe in doing business because I want to leave a legacy behind. I like the challenge in growing something from scratch. 

Through MaGIC’s Global Accelerator Program, I met the founder of Cloudbreakr who is based in Hong Kong. We had a good team synergy and that was why I chose to work together with him to bring Cloudbreakr to Malaysia. 

Being the LinkedIn for influencers, Cloudbreakr creates job opportunities for them, and also for businesses to grow. In six months, we now have 3,500 influencers in the Malaysian database. We connect the companies who need influencers for campaigns and marketing their brands.

We have a good relationship together and share the same idea – something that lacked in my previous startups. Even if I have a business plan, the team is important. The team comes first before the business plan, running the business is teamwork. 

It is important to connect the dots in your life because looking back, I realized that my past built me to be more independent. 

I like challenges, and I like building things up – and you will learn more about what’s important in your life as you grow along.” 
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian 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! 

Photostory by Christine Cheah
Edited by Amalina & Mushamir

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(This post was first published on June 23rd 2018)