1) MALAYSIA’S SEARCH FOR YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS
The Road Less Travelled Leads To Great Rewards
by Dato’ R. Rajendran
May 2011
Development in entrepreneurship has had a positive and significant impact on the local business sector. Thegovernment has always given attention to developing young entrepreneurs into resilient and competitiveplayers in the global market, which serves as their long term goal. As such, young people need to take advantage of the opportunity presented before them to explore the vast field of entrepreneurship, making it their primary career option.
A paradigm shift among young people is highly imperative, as their contributions to entrepreneurship would stimulate the country’s economic growth, and help it move towards becoming a developed nation by 2020. Possessing the academic intellect and skill set, they are the ones who will pave the way for a more advanced and prosperous economy.
Unfortunately, entrepreneurship is not the main career option amongst young Malaysians, considering how few of them there are compared to the employed. The most notable reasons for this state of affairs include the lack of initiative and competitiveness, as well as fear of failure.
The Malaysian society more often than not, frowns upon risk taking, giving graduates little incentive to go all out in pursuing new ventures and ideas, and as such they would rather play it safe. Infrastructure and government initiatives are for nought, if graduates themselves do not want to be entrepreneurs.
Malaysians can look up to role model entrepreneurs to chart their own success. One fine example is Masterskill Education Group Bhd’s founder Datuk Seri Edmund Santhara, founded his own institution, Masterskill, which is the country’s largest operator of non-government nursing colleges. Under his leadership, Masterskill has seen student population growing to over 9000 through the implementation of innovative measures. These include the procurement of study loans from various funds, revolutionising the nursing andhealthcare educational system and negotiating arrangements for the utilisation of Ministry of Health hospitals for training. He has successfully revolutionized and popularised nursing and allied health education in the country within a short span of two years.
Ganesh Kumar Bangah is the co-founder of MOL and group CEO of Friendster. He basically built his company from scratch and is now the biggest online payment service provider in Asia. Another fellow Malaysian that has certainly made a name for himself is Joey Yap, the founder of Master Academy of ChineseMetaphysics and the chief consultant of Yap Global Consulting.
A young entrepreneur, Patrick Grove, who is based in Malaysia is someone to emulate as well. Perseverance and adaptability brought Grove success 10 years after he started his first company. The collapse of the dot-com bubble left Catcha.com, Grove’s first company, in debts. Catcha changed its business model and ventured into the magazine business for the next five years, bringing its portfolio of 20 magazines to Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
People like Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is another one of many such examples, and to date is still the richest young billionaire in the world at the age of 26. His great insight and intelligence allowed him to incorporate pre-existing concepts and turn it into ideas that have swept the world.
Similarly, co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page ventured into a market which was thought to be at that time impenetrable, setting up a search engine. With giants like Yahoo! and Microsoft’s own search engine to contend with, Google’s founders were able to focus on niches, and through adding value to ideas and concepts, come up on top of its competitors.
Another fine example is John Arnold, a hedge fund manager, who built his fortune through gas trading. While not as glamorous as the two IT examples, John’s road to success was paved with similar kind of challenges.
Born in Taiwan, Jerry Yang moved to the United States of America when he was 10. He created his web directory in 1994 with partner David Filo when both were Stanford grad students. While it is no longer the number one search engine in the world, The Yahoo! co-founder made his debut among America’s richest at age 29.
The one thing that aspiring young Malaysian entrepreneurs can learn from these people is how, from their humble beginnings, were able to turn their ideas into something of great value. Despite all odds, they were able to overcome challenges presented before them and go on to become what they are today. It is not impossible for young Malaysian entrepreneurs to emulate these people, as all resources have been laid out before them. All it takes is some hard work and effort, and the inspiration to succeed.
2) Can entrepreneurship be taught?
BY CHERYL YEOH, Tuesday, marcH 3RD 2015
THIS WEEK’S column comes all the way from Palo Alto, home to Stanford University which anchors much of the talent in Silicon Valley.
The university has churned out entrepreneurial graduates, whose alumni network include founders of such giants as Google and Yahoo!, and more recent successes like Instagram and Snapchat.
Stanford continues to be a innovation pipeline, and its stream of startups have contributed significantly to the American economy, creating US$3tril (RM10.8tril) in economic impact every year and over 5.4 million jobs so far.
I am currently here with senior faculty members from the technical departments of three selected Malaysian public universities to participate in a three-year partnership with Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), as part of MaGIC’s Faculty-Train-Faculty (FTF) programme. STVP-FTF aims to expose local faculty to how entrepreneurship is taught at Stanford, and to explore how Malaysian universities can improve existing entrepreneurship curriculums or develop new programmes that encourage entrepreneurial thinking.
We asked the Stanford faculty how they measured the success of their entrepreneurship programmes.
To our surprise, STVP’s KPI wasn’t the number of startups created, as that would lead to the creation of companies for the sake of meeting numbers. Rather, STVP tracks the oversubscription of their entrepreneurship classes, and whether the courses received stellar ratings.
These are considered better indicators of how valuable the courses are to students, and whether ultimately they achieve the goal of raising student interest and inculcating an entrepreneurial mindset.
As I was brainstorming with the local faculty on this, I reflected on my secondary school days when I participated in the Young Enterprise Programme (YE) in Form 3 for 20 selected students. YE was introduced by the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce in 1989 and driven by sponsor companies.
Motorola was my school’s sponsor, and we had the company’s product manager as our board adviser. Even though we primarily sold custom-made canvas bags, do-it-yourself science kits, and baked goods, this programme gave us an invaluable year-long experience into the end-to-end process of starting a company and creating products.
We incorporated our company, selected a CEO and assigned team roles. I chose to be the R&D director because I wanted to be the mastermind behind our products. We sold shares to teachers, parents, and peers, and by the end of the year, gave our happy investors a return on their investment of 800%!
Looking back, I must say it was a memorable experience to turn my house into a production facility and pay ourselves 10 sen an hour in labour cost. We learnt the importance of unit-cost economics and how to market and sell products to customers.
YE fuelled my desire to be an entrepreneur. I hope more schools and colleges implement such a programme. An internship programme to expose students to local or regional high-growth startups would be very helpful too.
Such practical experiences should take precedence over theory, because entrepreneurship is not about memorising company structures or best practices, but rather the application of innovation within a business. In fact, subjects that teach problem-solving and critical thinking skills, finance and accounting, negotiations, spreadsheet modelling, digital marketing, psychology, English writing, presentation skills, and so on, are more useful to an eventual entrepreneur.
Mentorship is another important part of entrepreneurship education. When I was studying at Cornell University, I wish I had more opportunity to hear from real entrepreneurs. It wasn’t until I was working in New York and attended a lot of startup events that I mingled with entrepreneurs and was inspired by them.
The entrepreneurial bug rubs on as we’re influenced by the people around us. I was compelled by my environment, which brings me to my next point. Our environment plays a crucial role in framing our mindset, beliefs and aspirations. For example, a child raised by entrepreneurial parents is exposed to a different set of core values and practice.
While my peers were pressured to stay home to study and earn good grades, my mum supported my initiatives to sell products door-to-door, and my decision to sell antiques and junk in a flea market. She encouraged my entrepreneurial tendencies so I would learn the value of money and financial independence.
So can entrepreneurship be taught?
I believe it can, to a certain extent. It’s a combination of being in a conducive environment, being taught a set of skills and having the right attitude. Apart from being street-smart and intelligent, other essential qualities include drive and resourcefulness. Entrepreneurs are problem solvers who challenge the status quo and believe that things can be done better. They are change-makers who believe they can solve social and environmental problems.
My challenge to Malaysian universities is to cultivate the spirit of entrepreneurship among students through culture and course design, and for parents to instill and encourage entrepreneurial thinking at a young age.
It’s a collective effort to grow the Malaysian startup ecosystem, and yield results for our nation’s economy.
3) 1MET database for aspiring entrepreneurs
By Sharon Ling, Friday, 27th February 2015
Welcome: Irwan (left) greeting participants at the boot camp in Kuching. - Photo by ZULAZHAR SHEBL
KUCHING: Aspiring entrepreneurs will be registered in a database under the 1Malaysia Entrepreneurs (1MET) programme so that they can be given further training.
Chief secretary to the Treasury Tan Sri Dr Irwan Serigar Abdullah said participants attending the 1MET boot camp would have their details recorded in the database.
“This will be done all over Malaysia. We will closely monitor the database and contact them to see how keen they are in becoming entrepreneurs.
“For those who have good ideas and the potential to be further developed, we will bring them to Kuala Lumpur, provide them with further training and expose them to investors,” he told reporters after launching the third series of the boot camp at the Urban Transformation Centre here yesterday.
Irwan said the two-day boot camp aimed to introduce the core concepts of entrepreneurship and venture creation to participants, including how to develop and pitch their ideas.
He said 1MET could exceed its target of training 5,000 youths nationwide this year based on the participation for the Kuching boot camp, which attracted 1,000 people.
“Having said that, not all of them will become entrepreneurs. The initial decision to become an entrepreneur is important. We need to change people’s mindset and create an ecosystem that is conducive for entrepreneurship,” he said.
Irwan also said entrepreneurship was vital for Malaysia to achieve its target of becoming a high-income, developed nation.
“As entrepreneurs, you create jobs for others. We want you to concentrate on high-end products and technology,” he said.
A total of 21 boot camps have been planned throughout Malaysia this year, including at least one in each state.
4) Hats off to Malaysian Businessmen
BY BEH YUEN HUI, Thursday, February 12th 2015
With best wishes: The Federation of Malaysia Chinese Guilds Association deputy president Tan Chuan Yong (right) presenting a memento to Chai (second from right) as Liow (centre), Dr Wee (second from left) and organising chairman Datuk Yap Yit Leong look on.
Topping the list was Bina Puri Holdings group managing director Tan Sri Tee Hock Seng who received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the award presentation ceremony.
The other recipients of the main awards were MK Wedding founder Datuk Calvin Khiu (Supreme Achievement Award), B.T.T Travel Services executive director Kwan Poh Choy (Outstanding Entrepreneur Award), Tint Auto managing director Datuk Teoh Hwa Cheng (Excellence Entrepreneur Award) and VWA founder Dr Samantha Ng (Innovation Entrepreneur Award).
The awards ceremony, organised by the Federation of Malaysia Chinese Guilds Association (Hang Tuan), was also held in conjunction with the association’s 94th anniversary celebrations.
It is aimed at recognising business leaders while encouraging young entrepreneurs to expand their businesses overseas.
MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, who attended the ceremony, encouraged the young people to venture into entrepreneurship and start their own businesses.
He also urged businessmen to come up with comprehensive plans and strategies to draw more investors from China to the country.
Also present was MCA deputy president Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong.
At the event, Hang Tuan also presented a plaque with the Chinese characters “zao fu ren qun” (literally translated as “bringing prosperity to the people”) to its president Datuk Chai Kim Sen to mark his appointment as a senator.
Chai, who is also MCA deputy national organising secretary, received his Senatorship in June last year.
Recipients of the Golden Entrepreneur Award included Ban Kah Chai Group chairman Loo Teong Hee (pharmaceutical), Perkasa Jauhari director Chong Chu Chen (construction), Abeille d’Or Corporation managing director June Liao (healthcare), Happy Alliance managing director Tan Seng Chon (food industries), Besteel deputy managing director Lew Heng Mun (machinery and mechanical), Hee Lai Ton Restaurant founder Yap Yook Wah (food and beverage) and Kimmark managing director Datuk Tan Boon King (manufacturing).
The others were Clara International Beauty Group founder Prof Datin Dr Clara Chee (cosmetics), Eduwis managing director Simon Tee (early childhood education), Eakonmech managing director Datuk Yaw Chan Choy (electrical engineering), Beneithem founder Lee Beng Huat (furniture), Mr Tailor founder Ling Ee Ching (tailoring), TMC Edu Management chief operations officer Joseph Wang (education), Alliance Education principal Ng Chii Shiang (franchise) and My Group International chief executive officer Lim Kee Siang (newcomer).
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