As I look out at 2019, there’s certainly plenty to be optimistic about – revolutionary new technologies are fueling the 4th Industrial Revolution and positively impacting how we work, live, connect and play.
It’s exciting to see technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mixed Reality (MR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) becoming key drivers for digital transformation and making a positive and lasting impact on our society and environment. In Australia, for example, the Department of Primary Industry and Resources for the Northern Territory Government is using AI and IoT to identify and analyze hundreds of precious fish species in one of Australia’s largest harbors. This massive undertaking will ensure fisheries’ resources are sustainably-managed, protected and developed for future generations.
Although there is good reason to be generally optimistic about economic and societal prospects for 2019, some business leaders have also confided in me that they see significant challenges ahead.
In particular, many industries are being disrupted, sometimes even revolutionized, by the adoption of digital technologies and processes, often bringing with them new and more agile competitive entrants to their industry.
How should established industry participants respond to these kinds of disruptive challenges?
In late 2018, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, introduced the concept of “tech intensity”, where organizations can embark on accelerated digital transformation journeys by adopting technologies much faster than before and focusing on building their own digital capabilities.
In 2019, to help organizations embrace and drive “tech intensity”, here are five technology decisions that Asian CEOs should make as we enter the new year:
1. Modernize your data strategy: If we compare a digital organization to the human body, then data is the blood that provides nourishment and allows it to grow.
In large organizations across Asia Pacific, the challenge is often not about the availability of data, but the vast effort needed to manage the almost-uncontrollable growth of the organization’s data estate. For example, banks today need to track and analyse tremendous amount of unstructured data coming in from new channels such as connected devices, new customer touchpoints and 3rd party data flows. They also need to factor in additional resources to cope with increasing regulatory and compliance requirements.
CEOs need to prioritise the redefinition of their organization’s entire data strategy, from creating a secure platform to managing and harnessing data to creating a corporate culture where the workforce embraces data in their daily work. It is only with a sound data strategy that organizations can truly optimize new digital transformation technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence.
2. Accelerate full cloud adoption: There was a time, not that long ago, when CEOs would ask me: “Should we move our data to the cloud?”. Now, increasingly, they are asking: “Can we afford not to?” The question is not just one of economics (although, for most customers, the ROI of moving to the cloud are highly – and increasingly – compelling). They are also considering the risks of maintaining their own on-premise security data-centre infrastructure, including hardware, software, physical and operational security, hiring IT security experts and meeting statutory or industry standards and certifications. Many large customers now opt for a hybrid cloud strategy that combines both public and private cloud by allowing data and applications to be shared between them. This approach gives businesses the ability to seamlessly scale their on-premises infrastructure via the public cloud when required – without giving third-party datacenters access to the entirety of their data.
3. Workforce reskilling is a new CEO priority: Many of the CEOs I speak with are excited about AI’s potential to increase productivity, reduce costs and accelerate innovation. For example, Airdoc, a fast-growing start-up from China, uses AI to help detect medical problems by examining a patient’s eyes in less than a second. Its potential to transform patient care is limitless. But would healthcare organizations be able to seamlessly integrate Airdoc’s AI solution into healthcare professionals’ workflow if they do not have the necessary training?
CEOs need to focus increasingly on workforce reskilling in their digital transformation journey to ensure that their people and processes are aligned to optimize the new technology. Without that, AI projects are likely to fail because of the lack of digital expertise to utilize the technologies and the absence of data skills to derive actionable insights.
4. Cultivate a new digital mindset: To paraphrase Peter Drucker, culture eats technology for breakfast. No amount of new technology application will deliver an organization’s true digital transformation unless it is accompanied by a corresponding change in culture; one that embraces an open mindset and favors experimentation, learning and growth. At Microsoft, we laid this foundation over four years ago when we underwent our own transformation, focusing on creating a ‘learn-it-all’, rather than ‘know-it-all’, culture. This change in mindset enabled us to, for example, embrace a dramatic transformation of our business model.
5. Trust defines the new digital organization: When it comes to customer trust, it has been said that it is often “earned in drips and lost in buckets”. Trust in your organization can take years to build and can be destroyed in a single moment. This ethos resonates particularly deeply in today’s digital world where organizations face mounting cyberthreats as well as evolving regulatory and ethical expectations when it comes to online transactions and handling of customer data.
Ultimately, the responsibility for the creation and maintenance of customer trust sits squarely with the CEO, who needs to ensure that all elements of trust – including security, privacy, reliability, transparency, compliance and ethics – are embedded into all digital transformation initiatives right from the start.
Increasingly, CEOs also need to examine if their ecosystem of partners recognize and share the same trust principles as their own organization. Specifically, do the technology partners they entrust with their customer data have the same set of values, principles and policies – when it comes to the use of that data – as they do.
In summary, I believe that 2019 is the year of hyper digital transformation, where many business leaders will start to take quantum leaps in their response to a new digital economy. To do so, CEOs need imbue their organizations with ‘tech intensity’ by focusing on the five technology decisions that I have outlined.
from left to right, Juliana Jan ( Chief Investment Officer, Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd), Ganesh Kumar Bangah (Founder and Executive Chairman, Commerce DotAsia Ventures Sdn Bhd) and Isaac Leong (CEO, Kumoten).
Kumoten, a Malaysian-owned tech startup, has been making waves as the largest homegrown dropshipping platform with more than 100,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) in its catalogue.
from left to right, Juliana Jan ( Chief Investment Officer, Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd), Ganesh Kumar Bangah (Founder and Executive Chairman, Commerce DotAsia Ventures Sdn Bhd) and Isaac Leong (CEO, Kumoten).
Late last year, Kumoten achieved another milestone when its founders, brothers Isaac Leong and Leong Yew Meng, closed a round of pre-Series A equity funding, led by Cradle Fund.
Kumoten’s first venture capitalist, Commerce DotAsia Ventures Sdn Bhd (Commerce.Asia), came in at Kumoten’s seed stage in 2017. At that time, Commerce.Asia’s Founder and Executive Chairman Ganesh Kumar Bangah mentored the company and helped it grow under Commerce.Asia’s GrowthX Market Acceleration Program, a programme licensed from Silicon Valley. Since then, Kumoten has grown its active user base by more than seven times.
Commerce.Asia strengthened its support for Kumoten when it joined the round of investment in late 2018 together with the Cradle Fund. The majority of the funds from this recent equity round will help Kumoten expand its product research and development team and talent acquisition. It also plans to launch local dropshipping sites in Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand and extend its marketing activities to attract users from these new markets.
Inspiring confidence
“As the Chinese saying goes, it’s a case of the right people being in the right place at the right time,” says Kumoten’s CEO Isaac Leong about the strong investor confidence that the company has inspired. “Malaysia and South East Asia are experiencing rapid growth in e-commerce. And Malaysia has one of the best infrastructure in the region for e-commerce growth.”
In addition, Kumoten has shown a strong product-market fit proven by its impressive growth in its active user base as well as in its gross merchandise volume–which has grown by five times since May 2018. Its secret to success has been the seller-centred solution it has provided. Kumoten has ultimately improved sellers’ lives by taking away the seller’s biggest pain point–mounting piles of stock in the home or in warehouses, as well as a backed-up cash flow.
The platform takes care of these challenges and creates a more efficient platform that allows users to easily select products and sync product details to online marketplaces such as Lazada and Shopee. “We want online sellers to enjoy selling online and to focus on sales and marketing activities instead of worrying about the cost of investing in stocks, taking product photos and writing product descriptions”. Isaac believes that Kumoten has not only solved a problem faced by Malaysian online sellers but also online sellers from South East Asia, India and the Middle East.
“Most importantly, our investors believe in the founders and our management team’s ability to deliver on our financial goals. It helps that our team is also able to work closely with our investors to achieve greater heights.”
With its healthy track record, Kumoten has won trust from all major online marketplaces in Malaysia such as Lazada, Shopee, Lelong.my and 11Street.my.
Extra edge
In South East Asia, Kumoten is a pioneer in adopting the Automated Dropship system, where users do not have to download or copy and paste product data.
Kumoten provides resellers with good quality and marketplace-compliant product photos, product descriptions and specifications as well as pricing information such as suggested retail price, cost price, and shipping costs. With the automated system, it just takes a few clicks for users to select and sync products to their online stores.
The system also automatically updates the inventory level of the product, ensuring that out-of-stock items are immediately updated on a user’s online store.
“We wanted to disrupt the conventional business model of “buy-first, sell-later” to “pay-as-you-sell”, thereby removing the risks of keeping stocks. This increases the number of products an entrepreneur can sell online as they do not have to fork out money to buy stocks.”
“We estimate that at least 34 per cent of sellers on major online marketplaces in the region either do not have enough products or have no products of their own to sell” says Isaac of Kumoten’s target audience.
There is no limit to the items a user can select and sync to their online store. “We had a user who synced about 22,000 items to Lazada in July and generated almost RM20,000 worth of sales from his online store in Lazada within a month,” says Isaac.
Continued potential
According to Isaac, e-commerce in South East Asia is growing rapidly but is still considered to be at an early growth stage and that dropshipping complements this growth.
“The potential of dropshipping is in riding the e-commerce growth wave. We estimate by 2020, dropshipping in South East Asia will have a USD7.5 billion market size,” he says. On a daily basis, Kumoten adds 500 – 600 new items to its product list.
Besides the huge market size potential, Isaac also believes that the technology behind dropshipping is underdeveloped, with most players still using a conventional model.
One of Kumoten’s goals is therefore to expand its research and development. Isaac says: “There are many other areas and technology we can develop to bring dropshipping to a higher level. And we hope to be at the forefront of this innovation.”
Leading township developer, LBS Bina Group Berhad (LBS), maintains an upward growth trend in 2018 with sales increased to over RM1.5 billion from RM 1.4 billion in 2017. This marks the fourth consecutive year of improved results with a strong 25% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2018.
Speaking at its 2019 Outlook Briefing, Group Managing Director, Tan Sri Lim Hock San, said, “LBS has once again achieved positive growth despite a challenging market environment. Achieving improved results over four consecutive years validates the strategy we have adopted. We have a good track record in providing strong product offerings which meet the needs of home buyers, at the right time, and more importantly, at the right price range.”
In 2018, its sales were mainly derived from new project launches in LBS Alam Perdana in Puncak Alam, Residensi Bintang Bukit Jalil, Zenopy Residences in Seri Kembangan and Kita @ Cybersouth in Dengkil. Additionally, ongoing developments in township projects including Bandar Saujana Putra, D’ Island Residence in Puchong, Bandar Putera Indah in Batu Pahat and Cameron Golden Hills in Cameron Highlands, also contributed positively to the healthy sales result.
Moving into 2019, despite a subdued property market outlook due to persistently cautious market sentiment and a slower global economic growth, LBS is confident of sustaining its RM 1.5 billion sales target for 2019, driven by the right product offerings and new launches mainly in the Klang Valley. These include the LBS Alam Perdana township and Kita @ Cybersouth township in Dengkil which is expected to contribute significantly to the Group’s earnings in 2019.
“There is still strong underlying demand for quality and affordable units. Our strategy to focus on more affordable units within self-sustaining and matured townships, with good designs, amenities and easy accessibility, continues to be well received by the market and has helped us ride through the challenging market conditions,” said Tan Sri Lim.
LBS remains optimistic about its growth prospects with total unbilled sales stood at RM 1.745 billion as of 31 December 2018. The Group has lined up new projects with an estimated Gross Development Value (GDV) of RM1.82 billion. The property projects to be unveiled in 2019 include double storey terrace houses in LBS Alam Perdana, Residensi Bintang Bukit Jalil condominium, double storey terrace houses in Bandar Putera Indah, Batu Pahat as well as more than 1,000 affordable homes in Kita @ Cybersouth.
Business Today talks to four digital advocates about helping Malaysian tech companies go global
By Amanda Suriya Ariffin
Making the transition from an entrepreneur to a champion of entrepreneurs seemed a natural progression for Gopi Ganesalingam. “I thought things would be easy as an entrepreneur,” he begins, “but it was very tough, a lot of work for me; a lot of things that could have gone wrong, went wrong.”
The Vice-President of Enterprise Development at the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) afforded Business Today a slice of his time to talk about Malaysia’s Digital Ecosystem and more importantly, the Global Acceleration and Innovation Network (GAIN) programme, an initiative designed to elevate Malaysian technology companies onto the regional and global stage.
The former entrepreneur, a finance professional by qualification who has served in senior management roles with multinational corporations in Asia Pacific, admits that “when I was running my own company, we had to find our own funding; the system wasn’t like this. Tough times, yes, but we managed it.”
This may be why he is the best person to lead a team specifically created to identify and catalyse Malaysia-based technology companies within the digital ecosystem for expansion, growth and recognition. “The GAIN programme is designed for entrepreneurs; it sits on four pillars,” he explains, but the end-goal remains the same: to build world-class tech champions.
One of the key pillars of the four that Gopi mentions, is market access. “The other one,” he adds, “is visibility.” Many of these companies “are really good companies but they have not yet been given a spot in the media or the opportunity for key speaking roles.”
The third pillar is perhaps one of the most crucial ones: money.
“We may not have the money, but we know where the money is.” It is not simply a case of just matching the funds to the outfit that needs it but, as Gopi points out, “It is about understanding the company, the entrepreneurs, what sort of appetite he/she has, and matching it with the people who have the money.”
Mentorship forms the last significant pillar of the GAIN programme. “The mentors provide their expertise on a pro-bono basis,” he says. “It is a pay forward sort of mentorship.” Having successful entrepreneurs help startups and smaller companies ensure the latter group does not make the same mistakes, in addition to opening doors for them, bringing them to different markets and perhaps investing in them (there has been the occasional buyout). This approach builds the structure and momentum needed to grow and nurture a thriving entrepreneurial and digital ecosystem.
The GAIN programme, the brainchild of MDEC in 2014, gained further traction when Gopi came on board in 2015. Bringing insights as an entrepreneur and as a finance person, brought solidity to this crucial programme, not just in Malaysia but also regionally and globally.
“We are now beginning to look at Japan, and having ventured regionally as far as the Middle East, the GAIN programme connects the digital ecosystems in these disparate regions, bringing people in each market, together.”
The breadth of the GAIN programme, having its tentacles in culturally diverse digital sandboxes, also involves local chambers,venture capitalists, other entrepreneurs, “as well as the Malaysian diaspora,” highlights Gopi; “We bring them all together, and that is how the programme is cultivated and structured.”
Success stories under the GAIN programme include Aerodyne as well as N2N Connect. These discoveries take the MDEC team from Middle Eastern shores to the Silicon Valley. The nature of business that these entities are built on can range from drone technology to stockbroking solutions.
One of the most valuable forms of assistance the GAIN companies benefit from, under the auspices of the GAIN programme is the restructuring and pivoting of business models to a digital platform. “These and many others are just the start of many upcoming Malaysian gems and champions,” beams Gopi.
The takeaways for any company in the select GAIN community include the paradigm shift of “thinking global and thinking big. Malaysia is a small market – thirty plus million people; if you want to have a big company, you have to go beyond the shores of Malaysia. Build a product that can go global, he adds; build it on a digital platform so that you can scale it up faster and shout it out and be proud that you are a Malaysian company.”
The community nurtured under the GAIN programme is a close-knit network of 150 companies. “Here, we know the CEOs personally and we know their left and right persons,” shares Gopi. The MDEC team knows the minutiae of these companies, which helps to form a culture of trust, cohesiveness, camaraderie and collaboration.
“2018 was a very good year for us,” nods Gopi. “We know the numbers are coming in very well and there is a lot of optimism for 2019 to scale this up, to elevate the success stories into market immersions with business platforms running in the region. The program in 2018 has driven a pipe of RM 2 billion – but more importantly – carrying this success forward gives more Malaysian entrepreneurs and companies sustainable hope in going global.”
Taking The Talent Pool Global
Natalie Sit, an Ipoh-native, admits she is not a natural entrepreneur; the accomplished sales expert is refreshingly honest about this. “My first job was as an admin clerk in an I.T. company’” but her then-boss saw her potential. She left her high-paying job, spent six months in New York – “I wanted to see what was happening there,” she laughs — returned to Malaysia for family matters and went from employee to partner. “The thought of getting another job didn’t quite excite me,” she smiles.
That was how Acestar was born, and today, it has been accorded distinction as the only Adobe Platinum partner. As Natalie explains, “We have supplied to and implemented I.T. solutions and system integrations in more than 2000 companies, covering more than 70% of the education sector and the future looks bright for Acestar.”
Founded in 2008 to provide quality ICT products and services to customers, Acestar’s CEO admits that the entrepreneurial journey is not without its challenges. “Laying the foundation for the business, while important, requires that you have a good team. Even though we broke even in the first year (testament to her sales target-oriented drive), I learned that management and leadership skills are equally important.
It’s not always about sales. Partnership with suppliers and different group,” she adds has taught her much about the skills a leader needs.
But what she also learned, more so after becoming acquainted with the MDEC GAIN programme in 2017, was the wealth of of insights ranging from exposure to markets such as Indonesia to a supportive network of like-minded professionals. The MDEC GAIN programme has broadened the horizon for Natalie and her fellow entrepreneurs.
While Acestar’s first few years saw Natalie wearing multiple hats as sales person, customer relationship and business manager, the MDEC programme has opened her eyes to future possibilities of partnerships in the region. “The MDEC GAIN programme has been very useful,” she shares especially when looking at regional business opportunities. “Growing a business through a partnership is a key lesson for many
entrepreneurs.”
She is a firm believer that the versatility of the multicultural landscape of the Malaysian market is a good starting point for successful entrepreneurs who want to look beyond Malaysian shores. In this respect, the MDEC GAIN programme has helped her to see how and where she can grow the business and increase Acestars’s footprint and visibility.
“No matter if you are startup or a scale-up, the MDEC GAIN programme has access to a vast and excellent network of industry experts – not just in Malaysia but also internationally – the people they introduce to us are really relevant to our business. Being a part of the thriving and multi-layered digital ecosystem also means that you can learn much from your peers and how important it is to be around them.” Being part of such programmes forms deep and lasting connections, she adds.
“And I feel lucky to be a part of the MDEC GAIN programme.” Bootcamps, workshops, exposure to markets regionally as well as digital ecosystem peers are just some of the elements of self-made success stories such as Natalie’s. She believes Malaysia can be Southeast Asia’s creative hub and leveraging on platforms such as GAIN can help nurture creative talents from graphic designers to video producers and even gamers.
“Talents like these can be trained, up-scaled and exported to global markets.” “Even if you are an established enterprise, or if you are a startup or scale-up, entrepreneurs stand to benefit from the MDEC GAIN programme,” she enthuses. “Because it allows them to explore international markets and to come back and share with the digital ecosystem to help future entrepreneurs to grow. “
Flying High
Aerodyne Founder and Group CEO, Kamarul Muhamed, understands re-invention. Though the company is just four years old, it has been ranked seventh globally in the survey by research company, Drone Industry Insights, and is 240 people strong with a presence in 18 countries. “It hasn’t always been smooth sailing; we have gone through three transformations in the past,” admits Kamarul. The enterprise and digital solution provider – using drones, primarily — has had to pivot themselves several times as a respond to what the market needed. “I noticed as the size of the company gets bigger and bigger the challenges get bigger, too.”
An accountant by profession, the numbers man who once served as a country manager for an American software company, has understood that sometimes you need to shift the business beyond its original intentions.
For Aerodyne, the journey began with using drones to film visuals for high-end documentaries to now using Drones-as-a-Service (DaaS) today. The group is rapidly becoming known as a leading drone specialist participating in sectors as varied as wind energy, infrastructure inspection and management, as well as data capture and data analytics for the benefit of delivering insights to the client.
“I wouldn’t say our solutions were perfect from day one, but GAIN has been giving us tremendous assistance.” He shares how the visibility, engagements and funding from being part of the MDEC GAIN programme “has put us on a different level.” Being a low-profile start-up initially and having their energies monopolised with getting things done, being part of the GAIN programme has been key in catapulting the company’s visibility beyond local shores.
“By the end of 2017, we were present in eight countries,” says Kamarul. Many of the company’s potential clients were big enterprises that faced the same problem: they tried to do maintenance and management by themselves. “It’s costly for our clients to do this themselves. We automate the whole process, we use artificial intelligence, vector analytics as well as predictive analysis.
Our mantra is to always do this faster, better and cheaper for our clients.” With more than 20 countries under their belt, things are looking exciting for Aerodyne in 2019 as their teams traverse the globe from Santiago to Chile and from Denmark to Japan. “The GAIN team is helping us with a big project in Japan.
It’s very exciting and it’s closely wrapped right now,” he grins. “They have been trying to set-up a drone-based solution and they still couldn’t take off.” We point out the clever pun to him, and he adds, “The GAIN programme has helped us gain recognition in many places.”
Running a business
Speaking to both Kamarul and Natalie revealed some common insights, both entrepreneurs emphasise that the human resource factor is one of the biggest challenges they face. For Kamarul, developing the team in the early days was a challenging task, and for Natalie, not having the right staff and being unable to afford the right talents can discourage a fledgling entrepreneur almost to the point of giving up.
Their insights reveal that having a sellable or star product or service is just the starting point for any business, and that having the right team is vital to sustaining a business.
Reaching the Right Market
The National ICT Association of Malaysia, PIKOM, is chaired by Ganesh Kumar Bangah with strong experience as one of the youngest technology entrepreneurs in Malaysia, having founded MOL Global almost two decades ago. He has an expert understanding of the digital ecosystem including what, eCommerce participants need in terms of market access, generating business acceleration and building a sustainable, successful growth trajectory.
“We have been working with MDEC for a long time,” he begins, detailing a number of initiatives between PIKOM and MDEC. One example is the Asia Pacific International ICT Awards (APICTA) organised jointly, while another is the Malaysia Cybersale, which in 2018 alone, over the space of just five days, generated RM370 million in sales.
Ganesh has precise insights on the marriage between business and technology. “Putting a product or service online doesn’t mean people will buy it – it’s all about going to the market.”
Growth X is an initiative where a program is licensed from the Silicon Valley “to help products that have not found the product market fit,” explains Ganesh. He points out a key question that all entrepreneurs have to consider: How do you reach the market that wants your product? “There is a methodology developed in Silicon Valley that we franchised and brought to Malaysia.”
Tech entrepreneur advocates such as Ganesh are crucial to helping companies understand the value of market discovery, market outreach, identifying the channels, and finally, market results. “Digitalising businesses makes it easier to measure results,” he points out, “but a lot of people do not know how to use the data.”
He credits the MDEC GAIN programme for its proven track record in helping companies grow.
“It has helped companies find the right market.” He concluded with outlining some key points entrepreneurs need to remember about the global market.
“It’s about knowing your customers. Fifteen years ago, technology was more difficult to understand. Today, you don’t need to understand the technology as everything is on the cloud. The technology is no longer the differentiating factor.”
For entrepreneurs to capitalise the RM250 billion worth of opportunity in Southeast Asia, it’s important to identify which market to target. In addition, competitors exist in multiple spaces including the online world; therefore, the differentiating factor is no longer the technology, but to understand, and correctly target the right markets and in the right regions. Programmes such as MDEC’s GAIN help sharpen the focus for our Malaysian tech success stories to become globally-recognised superstars.
Kuala Lumpur 240518 Kumpulan Perangsang Selangor CEO Ahmad Fariz Hassan During Kumpulan Perangsang Selangor Bhd Agm/Egm (pic by : Ismail Che Rus)
The Board of Directors (“the Board”) of the Kumpulan Perangsang Selangor Berhad (“KPS” or the “Group”) (KPS, Bursa: 5843; Bloomberg: KUPS:MK; Reuters: KPSB.KL) has announced on 2 January 2019 the appointment of Ahmad Fariz Hassan to the Board as Managing Director effective 1 January 2019. He will also assume the role of Group Chief Executive Officer. Prior to this appointment, Ahmad Fariz was KPS’ Chief Executive Officer, a position he had held since 1 May 2016.
Graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accountancy from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Ahmad Fariz’s 20-year working experience span banking, investment, consumer and property development sectors. From his previous tenure in Ekuiti Nasional Berhad and Khazanah Nasional Berhad, he honed expertise across a wide ambit of investment decision process, a competency proven useful in his reign in KPS.
Soon after he joined KPS in 2016 as Head of Strategic Planning and Investment and subsequently Chief Executive Officer, he successfully mobilised strategic measures to harness aggressive growth potential for the Group. Capitalising on commercial opportunities in the manufacturing industry, he spearheaded the Business Transformation Plan (“BTP”), a growth agenda resulting in the Group having stronger business dynamics, with not just regional but also global presence. With the ongoing implementation of the BTP, Ahmad Fariz has steered a new business direction for the Group, one which aims for sustainably strong business growth, optimising shareholders return as well as repositioning KPS brand in the market.
KPS has since evolved as a focused investment holding company with core assets in the manufacturing, trading, licensing and infrastructure sectors.
The Board also announced the appointment of Koay Li Onn as Independent Non-Executive Director with effect from 1 January 2019. Currently the Managing Director of the Bangsawan Group which provides corporate, financial and strategic advice across Singapore and Malaysia, Koay has had successful careers in law, finance and banking for 22 years, and a proven leadership track record of strong revenue-generating Malaysian business for a multinational Fortune 500 company.
Koay graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the International Islamic University, has a Master’s in Law from Harvard Law School, and undergone the Executive Education Programme from the University of Oxford.
His professional experience includes being admitted as Advocate & Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya, being admitted as Attorney & Counselor-at-Law in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, USA, becoming a Capital Markets Committee Member in the Association of Banks Malaysia, and being elected a Committee Member in the Financial Markets Association of Malaysia.
En. Ahmad Fariz Hassan’s and Mr. Koay Li Onn’s appointments expand the KPS Board to 10 members, from eight previously.
KPS’ Chairman Raja Shahreen bin Raja Othman said:
“These additions to the Board reflect the consistent enhancement to the Board alongside the Group’s ongoing strategic shift towards becoming a high-growth and returns-focused entity.
Ahmad Fariz has been a pivotal force in conceptualising and realising the Group’s Business Transformation Plan, where various acquisitions of new businesses and holding of majority stakes in growth-centric companies have placed the Group on a path of sustainable expansion. With full responsibility for the leadership and development of KPS business, he will now be tasked to play even more role in meeting the Group’s ambitious business plan going forward.
We are also heartened to welcome Koay Li Onn who joins us as Independent Non-Executive Director. We trust that his extensive experience, business acumen and network across various sectors will strategically complement the Board’s counsel in establishing and guiding KPS’ business direction, fitting for our rapidly-expanding Group.”
“Bringing Quality N Quality to Life”. With this vision in mind, BenQ aims to enrich the lives of people by focusing on several key aspects – lifestyle, business, healthcare and education. Coupled with the philosophy “Because It Matters”, BenQ focuses on empowering people to:
L – Live Better
I – Increase Efficiency
F – Feel Healthier
E – Enhance Learning
BenQ is already in its 17 th year and now has more than 20 companies under the BenQ Group. BenQ has made great strides in the healthcare segment as well. Despite this being a relatively new venture (about seven years) – BenQ already has two medical centres and an affiliated hospital: the Nanjing BenQ Hospital in China. And it is this business (healthcare) coupled with its B2B ventures that prompted the
company to adopt its current slogan of Because It Matters, from the previous tagline Enjoyment Matters, in order to better reflect the values and focus of the company.
“BenQ is one of the worldwide leading display solution providers, committed to providing human-centric technologies with great integrations among Dustproof Laser Projectors, Germ-resistant and Smart Eye-Care Interactive Flat Panels and Wireless
Presentation Device Instashow,” says Jeffrey Liang, who was present at the launch of BenQ’s new Integrated Display Solutions recently.
Liang is the President of BenQ Asia Pacific. He oversees the APAC region, occupying the role for the past three years, with a further six-year stint in Europe as the Business Line Director, in charge of sales.
I for Increasing Efficiency
For its B2B business, BenQ focuses on increasing the efficiency for the corporate sector. Liang was quoted as saying, “What happens today compared to a decade ago is vastly different. The amount of information we get today is massive. With that, decisions need to be made on-the-fly. The digital world waits for no-one.” And no man is an island. Collaborations are imperative; many problems can’t be dealt with
by individuals alone.
In a recent trip to Japan, Liang noticed a dire need for a work style reform, echoing a similar sentiment from the Japanese government. The latter is looking at reforms to improve work-life balance for the younger workforce. Taking a cue from the launch, he made a note on a wide array of BenQ products being utilised seamlessly – from the projectors, displays and BenQ’s Instashow. Therefore, ensuring that businesses remain productive.
F for Feeling Healthy
Besides its foray into medical centres and hospitals, BenQ has gone a step furtherby releasing a display product that prioritises eye comfort utilising the latesttechnologies. The monitor is flicker-free and emits low blue light, reducing eye strain.All these, according to the Liang, are devised with school children in mind. “How screens are being used in schools and the children spending long hours on them. BenQ aims to provide the ideal solution for them and the teachers,” says Liang.
E for Enhancing Learning
Speaking about schools, one cannot stress how important education is. As Liangputs it, “We have fresh graduates entering the workforce embracing the latesttechnology. Regionally in APAC, emerging markets and the mature ones still require education for the corporate sector.” There are many ways to learn. And this is whereBenQ comes into the picture.
Liang cited an example from University Malaya (UM), one of BenQ’s clients. UM is already utilising the eye-care projector and requested for help from BenQ on how to operate the projector. And BenQ is readily available to offer such assistance.He notes that teachers are usually hesitant in embracing new technology, with students in this digital age being more well-versed and thus, an embarrassing affair for the teachers. However, this should not be a cause for concern as BenQ’sproducts are user-friendly and intensive training is provided – like in the case of UM.
He further opines that Malaysia’s demographic consists mainly of the young and thetech-savvy. They are very active socially and thus instilling brand loyalty a young ageis important.
And Finally, L for Living Better…2019 and beyond
BenQ has been making strides in the B2C (business-to-consumer) scene – especially with regards to gaming peripherals. “For 2019, we want to focus on life. We want to increase our B2B business – 40 percent B2B and 60 percent B2C. And by the looks of it, China will be the most important economy for BenQ. But, judging by statistics, India, in terms of GDP growth is higher than that of China. As you can
see, we are quite focused in Asia Pacific,” says Liang, giving a glimpse of what to expect for 2019 and beyond.
Kaspersky Lab has released its latest Corporate Social Responsibility Report – profiling the company’s technological, educational and charitable initiatives. This year’s report explores the work being done to promote gender equality in the technology industry across the globe, and how Kaspersky Lab is encouraging child education about digital security.
The report reflects how the company is helping communities grow and contributing to making the world a better, and safer, place.
Kaspersky Lab is a proud advocate for gender equality in the technology industry. We understand that diverse workforces make businesses more successful, productive and dynamic, and we are committed to promoting careers in cybersecurity to women. We believe cybersecurity is not only a rewarding and exciting career but it also does a lot of good in the world to protect people, businesses and organisations from cyberthreats.
We need more women to help us plug the skills gap and widen the industry’s perspective on those threats. Kaspersky Lab’s sponsorship of Girls in Tech’s AMPLIFY competition – a competition for female entrepreneurs to exhibit their business achievements – is just one of the initiatives the company supports in its aim to help more women to fully pursue their passion for digital products and services. Through PwC’s Tech She Can charter, Kaspersky Lab is also committed to increasing the number of women working in technology roles.
As well as inspiring women in the IT industry, Kaspersky Lab is dedicated to helping parents keep their children safe through technology. These solutions include the Kaspersky Safe Kids mobile app that allows parents to locate their children at all times. The app even sends a notification if a child is in unfamiliar territory. For instance, in South Africa, mother Lida Erasmus relied on the app to find her teenage daughter after she had left home with a young man and didn’t return. Lida’s fears were subdued as she was able to trace her daughter and drive to the location to pick her up.
Kaspersky Lab also regularly organizes Safe Kids roadshows to raise awareness about child safety on the internet. Children aged between 7 and 13 in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as parts of East Asia, have been taught how to keep themselves safe in both real and virtual life situations that could lead to danger.
Additionally, Kaspersky Lab employees support charitable causes through volunteering and organize events to help people in need and make the world a better place. Staff in Russia and North America have been particularly active in these initiatives, ranging from delivering vital supplies to an orphanage in Udomlya, to raising funds for the American Cancer Society and the Cure for Alzheimer’s Fund, along with those affected by Hurricane Harvey.
“In the 21 years of our company’s history we’ve come a long way – in many aspects. Corporate social responsibility may not be the most obvious one, but it’s still very important for the development of our corporate culture. It’s also our contribution to making the world outside our company’s walls a safer, better place. We focus on projects close to our line of work, like providing access to free security solutions or teaching kids about online safety, but we also have projects to ensure gender equality, and to promote STEM education,” said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab.
“I’m also very happy that we can share the results of the work done not only in our headquarters, but also in offices all around the globe with their own local volunteering programs and other charitable undertakings.”
Novotel, AccorHotels’ award-winning midscale brand, announces its debut in Haikou, the capital city of Hainan province. Ideally located on Xinbu Island, a newly developed area in the northeast part of Haikou city, Novotel Haikou Xinbudao is expected to quickly become a favorite on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province famous for its amiable tropical climate and idyllic sun-blessed beaches.
Located at the pristine location where the Nandu River runs into the Qiongzhou Strait, the hotel embraces superb views of the sea. Access is easy – 40 minutes’ drive from the hotel to Haikou Meilan International Airport and 90 minutes by high speed train to Sanya. It’s a five-minute taxi ride to Haikou’s downtown area with its 700-year-old arcade and streets featuring local delicacies. The capital’s scenic spots including Five Ancestral Temple, East Harbor Mangrove Nature Park and Baishamen Park are easily reached from the hotel.
“As the first Novotel in Hainan province and the brand’s 27 th hotel in Greater China, Novotel Haikou Xinbudao is opening at the right time when Haikou is set for a starring role in recently- announced plans for the island’s transformation into China’s largest free-trade zone, which will fuel Hainan’s development and bring substantial new business opportunities.” Said Gary Rosen, Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, AccorHotels Greater China. “As the first international brand of AccorHotels, Novotel continues to enjoy preference amongst consumers,
owners and developers alike, which is demonstrated by the international and regional awards including the recent ‘Best Mid-Market Hotel Brand in the World’ by Business Traveller Asia- Pacific and ‘Most Popular International Brand by Chinese Families’ by Global Times.”
The U-shaped building makes the most of the matchless setting for the 141 guest rooms, which include 15 Deluxe Rooms with spacious balconies for full enjoyment of the ocean views. Décor features the coconut tree image, an iconic feature of local culture. Blue is the predominant colour as it emphasizes the island’s ocean heritage.
Dining options include Square – dine at your leisure restaurant – featuring local and international buffets and a-la-carte menu choices. It also offers traditional Cantonese, Sichuan and local Hainan cuisine. Six VIP private rooms are available for small gatherings and business meetings. The Lobby Lounge serves a wide selection of beverages complemented by a menu of savory
snacks in a classic setting.
Function space includes three versatile meeting rooms. The 800m² pillar-less ballroom can host up to 600 guests. With its state-of-the-art technology, advanced equipment and classic design this is a perfect location for weddings, banquets and special events. The hotel also features a terrace which is ideally suited to outdoor events and wedding ceremonies.
An easy and comfortable living experience is enhanced by the hotel’s advanced facilities, including the signature In Balance by Novotel fitness as well as kids’ club, an outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court.
“Our superb location combined with our ambiance of understated hospitality to make people feel welcome defines our uniqueness.” Said Jack Lin, General Manager of Novotel Haikou Xinbudao. “Novotel’s ‘Easy Modern Living’ philosophy and its up-to-the-minute facilities will make us the perfect choice for a business traveler in search of convenience, or a leisure traveler seeking a peaceful get-away destination for relaxation.”
Enjoy a getaway at CNY698 net in the Superior Garden View Room with breakfast and dinner for two from now until March 31, 2019.
According to a world renowned cybersecurity company, financial institutions should start looking at more innovative and comprehensive ways to stress, and enhance their organisation’s defensive capabilities – including through the usage of adversarial simulations, or ‘Red Teaming’.
“In the cybersecurity context, adversarial simulation exercises take a holistic approach, when compared to traditional penetration testing exercises,” explained MWR InfoSecurity technical director Benjamin Harris.
“Where penetration testing focuses on validating technical controls or identifying technical weaknesses in specific assets, adversary simulation exercises place emphasis on the target organisation’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to adversaries targeting critical functions, across multiple technical and non-technical domains. These assessments look to stress the defensive capabilities of an organisation, with the view to ultimately identifying areas for enhancement and strengthening within these capabilities,” elaborated Harris.
MWR InfoSecurity, an F-Secure company, is a cybersecurity consultancy which was established in 2003 and provides specialist advice and solutions in all areas of security, from professional and managed services, through to developing commercial and open source security tools.
“Adversary simulations are driven by goals or objectives, typically representing the real objectives and motivations of real-world adversaries,” said Harris.
These assessments look to stress the defensive capabilities of an organisation, with the view to ultimately identifying areas for enhancement and strengthening within these capabilities.
Recently, the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) published a set of guidelines for the financial industry in Singapore to further encourage banks and other financial institutions to carry out adversarial attack simulation exercises.
The guidelines – known as the Adversarial Attack Simulation Exercises (AASE) Guidelines or “Red Teaming” Guidelines – provide financial institutions (FIs) with best practice and guidance on planning and conducting Red Teaming exercises to stress and enhance their organisational resilience.
“Such guidelines are designed to provide organisations with a framework and approach for stressing organisational resilience: This is achieved through simulating and replicating the sophistication and aggressiveness of real-world adversaries – utilizing similar tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs),” said Harris.
This holistic approach to ensuring the resilience of organisations and their critical functions follows in the footsteps, and builds upon a number of similar successful frameworks utilised by financial institutions in other regions – the Bank of England’s CBEST scheme, the De Nederlandsche Bank’s TIBER scheme and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s iCAST scheme.
“In the course of consultation with ABS, MWR InfoSecurity shared insights from our experience of running successful exercises and our views on how these exercises can be conducted to yield the most value to strengthen organisations’ resilience. We were also able to share insights from our involvement with similar exercises globally, including similar regulator-led exercises,” shared Harris.
The guidelines follow a general pattern of increased awareness with regards to cybersecurity across financial organisations, highlighting the significant evolution of the threat landscape and the evolution of approaches needed to counter this change.
The methodology employed by AASE aims to provide a more authentic and holistic view of a FI’s resilience. By simulating realistic attacks during the exercise and taking into consideration the relevant threat landscape and adversaries, the following benefits can be achieved:
– An assessment of the organisational resilience against adversarial attack techniques, tactics and procedures.
– Identification of weaknesses in security controls and associated risks not detected by standard vulnerability and security testing methodologies.
– An assessment of the FI’s security incident management and/or crisis management response and processes.
– A safe, controlled opportunity to identify and enhance the security posture of a FI reducing risk of cyber compromise.
– An opportunity for the defensive teams, such as the security monitoring or incident response team to gain experience and be more proficient in detecting and responding to incidents.
– Provide pragmatic direction to the involved stakeholders as well as confidence in an informed post-activity short, medium and long-term security strategy.
These simulations cumulatively aim to stress and enhance the people, process and technology that are supporting an organisation’s defensive capabilities in an end-to-end manner.
Leading Finnish cybersecurity experts F-Secure Corporation (F-Secure) has announced the appointment of Infoline IT Solutions Sdn. Bhd. as its B2B (business-to-business) distributor. With a strong presence in over 100 countries, F-Secure’s distribution network offers comprehensive coverage to both large corporations as well as small and medium enterprises (SMBs).
The appointment, we further demonstrate our commitment to businesses of all sizes. We are confident that in Infoline we have found a solid and reputable partner to join our value chain,” said F-Secure Southeast Asia regional manager Yong Meng Hong.
Infoline was founded in 2005 and is a leading IT service provider and value-added reseller headquartered in Hong Kong with offices in major Asian cities including Kuala Lumpur.
The company provides a complete range of specialised IT products and services ranging from initial inception and design, to planning and execution, technological consultation, project establishment, server customisation, as well as maintenance operation and support.
As a specialized niche player in the IT distribution services sector, Infoline has over 13 years of expertise in being a value-added distributor for Cyber Security, Networking, Infrastructure & Application Software, Storage Management, Electronic Security products and related products.
The agreement sees Infoline assisting F-Secure further extend its distribution ecosystem and will immensely add to the product value chain.
Infoline’s Loo Wai Hong said: “We are honoured to be welcomed into the F-Secure family. Infoline has strengthened our position in Malaysia greatly and we feel that this partnership with F-Secure is the perfect partnership for technological expertise and brilliant products. We look forward to fruitful partnership with them.”
Cementing a Leading Position
With leading cybersecurity solutions serving tens of millions of consumer customers and over 100,000 business users worldwide, F-Secure remains one of the most advanced and well-received cybersecurity companies in the world.
“We are continuously building on our presence with the aim of making our leading cybersecurity solutions more available to everyone. With cyberthreats becoming more advanced and prevalent, consumers are becoming more aware of the vital need for competent products and support,” said Yong.
With the appointment of Infoline, the company has taken yet another step forward in bringing its products to a wider user-base throughout the country and region.
Dell Technologies Inc has won the shareholder’s vote to go public, just after five years of going private in one of the biggest buyouts ever. The decision to go public sees them relisting as a financially stronger and more diverse leader in computer equipment and software. The move is expected to simplify a complicated corporate structure thus allowing the company greater flexibility to raise capital, boost its value and pursue stock-based acquisitions.
Reports by Fortune states that under the terms of the deal, Dell will buy out shareholders of the stock that tracks Dell’s stake in software maker VMware Inc., known by its ticker DVMT, for $23.9 billion worth of cash and shares.
The tech giant will also let their key investor Silver Lake, make its stake more liquid. The path to the vote hasn’t been simple, as investors balked at Dell’s initial offer and forced it to sweeten the bid to get the transaction over the finish line. Dell increased its offer to about $120 a share in cash and stock, from $109.
“With this vote, we are simplifying Dell Technologies’ capital structure and aligning the interests of our investors,” Michael Dell, the chief executive officer
VMware, which makes virtualization software to maximize workloads on servers, will remain a publicly traded company independent from Dell, despite the computer maker’s 81 percent ownership stake.
In the next few years the development of new electronic products will be based more and more on eco-sustainable organic materials such as bioplastic, which will allow to realize extremely innovative solutions. For this reason, Bio-on, listed on the AIM of Italian Stock Exchange and active in the high-quality bioplastic sector, announces the establishment of ELOXEL SpA, of which Bio-on and Kartell each hold the 50%.
Bio-on with the support of Kartell accelerates the development of organic electronics based on Bio-on technologies to quickly acquire a leading position in this rapidly growing sector. The researches in this field have already been conducted over 2 years in the Bio-on laboratories and during this year the first world-wide patents were deposited based on bioplastic, natural and 100% biodegradable, in the field of new batteries and full green piezoelectric materials.
ELOXEL operates in the field of flexible and wearable organic electronics, also single-use, to meet the growing need of consumers to have personal and portable energy always available. In this context, and exploiting the piezoelectric properties of Bio-on bioplastic (PHB), namely the ability to produce and store electrical energy as a result of mechanical stress, it is possible to develop membranes or devices to be integrated into clothes and fabrics keeping intact the mechanical properties or new generation batteries. The application fields are the most varied, from the consumer electronic sector to the biomedical one.
The new materials developed by ELOXEL will also contribute – like all Bio-on biopolymer-based applications – to limiting the new environmental emergency created by the huge amount of electronic waste exacerbated by the fact that current electronic devices do not allow efficient recycling processes and often contain highly toxic and hazardous components (e.g. lead / lithium batteries).
The investment announced today represents to us the launch of a new project – explains Marco Astorri, President and CEO of Bio-on – and we are particularly proud that a prestigious brand like Kartell, through Claudio Luti, invests once again in an innovation plan and in the enormous potential of the technologies developed by Bio-on in the field of organic electronics. Smartphones, watches, televisions, computers, wellness systems and other products have long been part of our bioplastic development plans, which every day proved to be used in various industrial sectors to create eco-sustainable products.
“I believed in the new company that Marco Astorri and his team of scientists presented to me – affirms Claudio Luti, President of Kartell – choosing to invest in this project in order to contribute to a growth process that looks at sustainability and at the protection of environment and people’s health.”
All the biomaterials developed by Bio-on (PHAs or polyhydroxy-alkanoates and PHBs or poly-hydroxy-butyrates) are obtained from renewable plant sources without any competition with food chains up to CO2; in most cases they guarantee the same thermo-mechanical properties of traditional plastics with the advantage of being completely eco-friendly and 100% biodegradable in a natural way. Thanks to the exclusive characteristics of its materials, Bio-on now extends its use to another of the most innovative and interesting field of application such as organic electronics. Electro-conductive plastic with piezoelectric properties similar to quartz will allow the production of interesting amounts of energy by mechanical means and the accumulation in super capacitors (green batteries) to be used in various applications. The researches in this field of application are based on PHBs, the only organic material that derives from the nature having piezoelectric properties.
Felofin completed the acquisition of 50% shares in ELOXEL SpA. Following the transaction, the share of Bio-on SpA and FELOFIN is equal to 50.00% each. Bio-on granted to ELOXEL SpA an exclusive license for the exploitation of organic electronics with a total value of Euro 6.500.000,00. From 2019 ELOXEL will begin various collaborations with companies and research centers leading the global electronic sector.
ELOXEL is born (organic electronics for electronics) the new company created by Bio-on to exploit the patents destined to revolutionize the world of electronics through the use of bioplastics. The aim is to enable designers to create sustainable products and revolutionary applications.
Kartell through Felofin participates in the new company ELOXEL with the 50% of capital shares: a financial operation that pays attention on the new frontier of organic electronics.
Bio-on researchers in Italy and the United States, who have been working in this field for about 2 years, have discovered that bioplastic can produce and store electricity as a result of mechanical stress. The researches confirm the extraordinary versatility of bioplastic: a platform product that can be used to transform and make the electronics sector also sustainable with new generation of batteries and passive energy generators.
For this activity Bio-on granted to ELOXEL SpA an exclusive license with a value of Euro 6.500.000,00
Great minds think alike… Bill Gates (left) and Wai Choon
Happiness in life is something many of us yearn and, in some cases, a few lucky ones have come to terms with true happiness.
Alex Butt Wai Choon, author, speaker and managing partner at Glides Consulting Partners is one of those few. Wai Choon was also a former Managing Director of Microsoft, whom Bill Gates had turned to at times for guidance and advice.
At various times in his life, Wai Choon has been a successful corporate executive, entrepreneur, and even Buddhist monk. Very recently he shared the key to success in happiness during a live interview with Money FM 89.3 – that success is the result of being happy.
“A lot of people are still pursuing and looking for other things – material, money – to define what success is at the end of the journey to actually don’t find happiness. Yet it’s the other way around. When you’re happy that in itself is success and the material elements will come along,” said Wai Choon.
He observes that, in many people’s minds, the progression towards happiness is very linear. It starts with a desire for something, the process to obtain it and the perception of happiness in the obtainment.
“That’s a flaw. That’s the condition we have been told and unfortunately it almost takes a lifetime for us to reach the end of the journey to find out it’s wrong,” he said.
Great minds think alike… Bill Gates (left) and Wai Choon
Three Roadblocks to Happiness and Success
Wai Choon believes that there are three key impediments to finding happiness or success.
They are ego, desires and ignorance. In his mind, desire leads to greed which leads to obsessiveness. Although people think that they want more and one day when they have enough, they will stop, in truth they will never stop.
Along those lines of thought, it is desire which leads to unhappiness and discontentment. He also mentions that ego is the route towards a lot of things such as anger, jealousy, and shame, and creates a mind that is unsettled.
“Kind of like water that’s boiled; you cannot see through it. When the mind is angry, you get directionless,” Wai Choon said.
With these impediments in mind, Wai Choon authored the book “A CEO and entrepreneur, a tourist and the monk: Finding the balance between success and happiness”.
So, What Are the Secrets to Happiness?
Having defined the impediments to success and happiness, Wai Choon knew that the answer will be something that was simple, yet difficult to achieve. To that end he envisioned a formula as simplistic as possible, what he called his ‘happiness and success’ equation.
“One end of the equation is time. We need to know how much time we have and how we allocate the time to pursue the ‘four M’s’ that will lead to happiness. The four M’s are; Making money, making merits, recognition that beyond the body there’s a mind, and mindfulness,” said Wai Choon.
Making money and merits are relatively straightforward, but Wai Choon feels that it is important to recognize the power of a nourished mind.
He alludes the similarity to athletes who recognize that there is mind over matter. Finally, mindfulness is the art of being present and enjoying the fruits of your happiness.
With those key pillars in mind, Wai Choon shared practical steps that individuals could take up to work towards the goal of happiness and success.
“There are the three things that I would recommend people to do, which I do it for myself. Number one is build good habits as a practical step. Second is meditate daily and the last one is mix around with the right kind of friends,” he said.
He recommends meditation as a useful activity to help clear the muddied waters of the mind. Just ten minutes in the morning to prepare for the day ahead, and ten minutes at night to clear the stress of a day can work wonders.
“Building good habits is to repeatedly do the good things and stop doing the bad things. We know certain things are no good. We don’t do them. Mix with the right kind of people who support your lifestyle. Get rid of some friends who are no longer supportive of your lifestyle,” he adds.
Staying True to the Path
Using the metaphor of riding a bicycle, Wai Choon reminds us that there’s no manual that can let you magically ride one.
The key is in the practice. So just as practice is necessary to be a good rider, being happy also needs continuous practice.
“Hopefully you understand that there’s the four elements that help you be successful, and you start working on them. Otherwise you think that there’s only one thing that is going to make you happy, which is making money”.
Learning truth the hard way, Wai Choon gave up his possessions and became a monk for 45 days, living in a forest.
On his path to knowledge, he meditated constantly and upon reflection, realised that he had found something that was different.
Ultimately, he is steadfast in his formula to success: time equals money, merits, mind and mindfulness.
The HLB LaunchPad is a platform to nurture new ideas and talent from Fintech and Tech Startups that will reinvent the way we bank today. The three winners are Finology, Dropee and EyeQ.
Finology provides SaaS platforms, off-the-shelf solutions & technology consulting for clients in banking, property & insurance sectors.
Dropee is a one-stop B2B eProcurement Platform and Enterprise Solution for all types of businesses.
EyeQ is a tech start-up which develops advanced AI, Computer Vision and Deep Learning technologies to revolutionize and disrupt the industries of retail, advertising, banking, security, Smart City & Factories.
These Top 3 startups will now embark on a pilot project with Hong Leong Bank to re-imagine the way we bank tomorrow. HLB is looking forward to having all the teams on board on a collaborative journey which commences Q1 2019.
This is the company behind the established brands Loanstreet & Loanplus. Loanstreet is a loan and insurance comparison site and Loanplus provides single point loan screening & origination for property developers & real estate agencies. The company also provides cutting edge white-labelled solutions for MNC clients through its consultancy arm Fincon.
Jared Lim, Founder and Managing Director of Finology said: “Finology is delighted to be part of HLB Activate 2018 and is looking forward to the journey together. Finology’s view is that with collaboration, Fintech can complement rather than disrupt the banking industry. HLB has passionately shown a similar understanding. We are grateful for HLB’s validation of Loanplus, and look forward to shaping the future of secured lending together.”
HLB Launchpad Activate 2018 is run in with the following partners:
Malaysian Business Angels Network, Cradle, MDEC, Asean Angels Alliance and 80RR Fintech Hub.
At HLB, we strongly believe that collaborating with the thriving community of tech savvy start-ups is key to driving innovation and transformation across the bank. That is why we have created the HLB LaunchPad.
We live in exciting times. From ride sharing apps to the emergence of new technologies like A.I and robotics, our world is being redefined at a pace like never before. Living up to our aspiration of being digital at the core, Hong Leong Bank (HLB) constantly looks out for new innovation and ideas to interact and engage with our customers and employees.
MBE Malaysia, the operator of Mailboxes Etc retail shipping and business services outlets, has been acquired by a new management team who will continue to tap into the country’s thriving e-commerce sector for growth.
MBE Ventures, led by entrepreneur Patrick Leung, has bought 100 per cent of MBE Business Corporation Sdn Bhd (MBC) from founder Brian Chow, who held the master franchisee licence of MBE Malaysia.
Leung, who took over as chief executive officer on Nov 1, has experience in diversified multi-national businesses around the world.
“Peter Low is the chief operating officer who will manage the MBE Malaysia franchise network and Ken Yee is the chief commercial officer in charge of developing new franchising opportunities, as well as identifying new potential markets,” MBE said in a statement.
Low and Yee are both former MBE franchisees who operated their own MBE outlets.
“We are excited to embark on this journey together with our franchisees, to grow the MBE presence and brand in Malaysia,” Leung said.
Already the largest network in the Asia Pacific region, MBE Malaysia has 94 outlets currently, with another five to open before the end of 2018, and it is planning to grow the network to at least 300 outlets nationwide over the next five years.
“MBE Malaysia is positioned to benefit from the fast growth of online shopping and e-commerce,” Leung said.
Leung said MBE Malaysia would be developing more products and services for this sector and was working to sign up more e-commerce partners such as Lazada which had teamed up with MBE Malaysia for its drop-off and returns services.
MBE Malaysia is also looking to deepen its brand presence among e-commerce entrepreneurs in the fast-growing Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin speaking segments, and customers in smaller towns and rural areas.
“We are also exploring opportunities for our franchisees to grow outside of the Klang Valley and the major cities, and are targeting to expand our presence in the smaller urban and semi-urban centres,” he added.
MBE is the world’s largest franchise network of retail shipping, postal, printing and business service centres, providing consumers and businesses the convenience of accessing these services under one roof.
Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, believes that the crypto market has hit a bottom; a state he has catchily-dubbed “the crypto-bottom of 2018.” Lubin is also the founder of ConsenSys – a software company that is based on the Ethereum blockchain.
The Verge reported on Thursday that ConsenSys was planning to lay off up to 50-60 percent of its staff, after letting about 13% of its employees go a month ago. Reassuring everyone that “the sky is not falling”, he rounds off the flurry of tweets saying that he is “excited” about available scalability solutions.
Lubin wrote that ConsenSys is still investing in external projects, and will continue to hire for internal projects. Following the recent layoff report, Lubin stated that the company had taken on fifteen people in the last week, and has created additional job listings that it is currently hiring for.
Back in September, the other co-founder of Ethereum – Vitalik Buterin – strongly emphasized that there is no chance that the blockchain and digital currencies space will ever see growth of one thousand times again. Who is to believe? As of now, only time will tell…
Looking forward to 2019, Tim VanTassel, Vice President and General Manager for Risk of FICO, a leading analytics software company, shares three areas of tactical concern within consumer banking that bank executives will make significant progress addressing in the New Year. From fighting the war for deposits, breaking down silos in digital transformation to analysing the payment landscape, FICO is confident that banks will make substantial progress in these areas.
Banks Will Get Smarter in the War for Deposits
The good times are over. In our current rising rate environment, any bank that can’t grow (or at least sustain) its deposits base will face shrinking net interest margins and a competitive disadvantage in their consumer lending businesses. Indeed, we are already starting to see signs of distress among community and regional banks that lack the advertising budgets and sophisticated digital capabilities of the big national banks.
In response to this competitive pressure, top 100 banks will invest in an area that has been neglected for too long — deposit pricing strategy. Sophisticated analytics tools, like optimisation, and the ability to rapidly deploy the models developed by those tools will give banks the ability to deliver smarter, more granular pricing, enabling them to compete effectively in this increasingly frenetic environment.
Digital Transformers Will Realize They Have a Silos Problem
A majority of banks are undergoing digital transformations, ranging in scope from simple channel technology upgrades to massive enterprise re-platforming initiatives. The goal is to create modern, compelling customer journeys that will differentiate the organisation from its competitors.
In 2019, it will become increasingly clear that these transformation projects require more than just new technology, they also require significant organisational changes. Siloed business units and technology stacks for credit risk, marketing, fraud and compliance work extraordinarily well for maintaining the status quo, but poorly when it comes to large-scale transformation. Banks will increasingly recognise this and work to ameliorate the negative effects of silos as they shift from product-centric to customer-centric business strategies.
Emerging Payment Solutions Will Grow Up
Emerging payment solutions — mobile wallets and P2P payment networks most notably — are slowly but steadily displacing legacy payment options like cash and credit cards and cementing themselves in the day-to-day lives of consumers (particularly Millennials and Gen Zers). Big strides are already made in Asia Pacific with mobile payment usage climbing 30 per cent in 2018, the trend is only going to accelerate in the coming year.
However, the faster these new payments move, the more attention they will attract from criminals. Emerging payment solutions will become more mature in 2019 as payments executives focus on educating their customers and adapting their fraud controls to compensate for this growing threat.
SOURCE: Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA)
Malaysia attracted a total of RM139.3 billion worth of investments in the manufacturing, services and primary sectors for the first nine months of 2018. This was an 18% increase from the RM118.1 billion approved in the same period last year. The total investments approved in January-September 2018 were from 3,243 projects and are expected to generate 93,379 job opportunities for Malaysia.
Approved foreign direct investments (FDI) increased by 109.7% to RM64.1 billion in January-September 2018 from RM30.5 billion in the same period last year. This was mainly driven by the manufacturing sector which recorded a strong increase of 249.4% in January-September 2018. Approved FDI in the primary sector also rose by 99.3%. This indicates that investor confidence in Malaysia remains high despite the challenging global economic environment. Meanwhile, domestic investments led with RM75.2 billion, contributing 54% to the total approved investments in all three sectors.
Manufacturing Sector
Malaysia continues to be a competitive location for manufacturing projects. A total of 468 projects worth RM59.1 billion were approved in January-September 2018 compared with RM34.6 billion in 463 projects in the corresponding period of 2017, representing an increase of 70.5% in capital investments.
Foreign investments approved in the manufacturing sector recorded a total of RM48.8 billion for January-September 2018, a rise of 249.4% from RM13.9 billion in the same period last year. China accounted for RM15.6 billion or 32% of total foreign investments, followed by Indonesia (18.4%), the Netherlands (17%), US (6.3%), Korea (4.9%) and Japan (4.3%).
Notable investments include a new manufacturing project from Leaf Malaysia OpCo, a US based company that will be setting up a facility in Johor to convert plant-based biomass into fermentable sugars.
“The first plant is expected to begin operations in 2021 and will create 60 job opportunities for highly skilled local workforce. Our 2G biomass products have a wide range of applications for domestic and export markets, including energy, fuels, bio-plastics and high value specialty chemicals. We have also identified a strategic local partner for our Johor BioHub operations,” said Leaf Malaysia’s Managing Director, Jason Jones.
Another quality project is an expansion by STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor MNC which has been in Malaysia since four decades ago. Its Malaysian plant is a key manufacturing facility for STMicroelectronics’ global assembly and test manufacturing. It is also the centre of excellence for development and manufacturing of automotive semiconductors. Approximately 70% of the semiconductors produced in this plant are dedicated to the automotive sector.
Malaysia has huge potentials to collaborate with these foreign companies and benefit from the transfer of knowledge and expertise across many industries. As the principal investment promotion agency of the country, MIDA continues to encourage local sourcing by foreign companies. Through the outsourcing of manufacturing, FDI has been driving technology by nurturing Malaysian companies to become global champions. For example, domestic industry players Vitrox, Pentamaster and Walta have established a one-stop metal component supply chain hub initiative known as the Penang Automation Cluster (PAC). The group leverages on the capabilities of human resources and availability of technical and vocational education in the country, which provides technical skills training to meet the demands of high precision and high quality metal fabrication parts and modules by multinational companies and large local companies.
“Our new investment will focus on building and managing the local supply chain ecosystem of advanced and precision engineering of metal fabrication. This will improve cost competitiveness through local sourcing of high precision parts and produce competitive products for the international market. Besides, with the adoption of Industrial 4.0 world class smart manufacturing in PAC, we will further attract high impact FDI and create job opportunities in the region. PAC will be the showcase of a successful model in stimulating more SME clustering concepts to support nation building,” said Mr Chu Jenn Weng, Director of PAC.
Under the 11th Malaysia Plan Mid-Term Review, the targeted catalytic and high potential growth subsectors namely electrical and electronics, chemicals and chemical products, machinery and equipment, medical devices and aerospace, continue to be emphasised. These industries contributed 31.5% (RM18.6 billion) to the total approved investments in the manufacturing sector. Other industries which recorded increased investments are petroleum products (including petrochemicals); basic metal products; paper, printing and publishing; rubber products; machinery and equipment; and transport equipment. These six industries constituted 63.5% (RM37.5 billion) of total investments approved during this period.
Investors have responded positively to the Government’s initiatives towards attracting investments in capital-intensive, high-value added and high technology projects. This is reflected in the increase of the capital investment per employee (CIPE) ratio to RM1,439,583 in the first nine months of 2018 from RM1,062,113 during the same period of this year.
The approved manufacturing projects will create 41,033 job opportunities. The jobs created include 775 electrical and electronics engineers, 867 mechanical engineers and 142 chemical engineers. In addition, the approved manufacturing projects will also require about 5,628 skilled craftsmen such as plant maintenance supervisors, tools and die makers, machinists, IT personnel, quality controllers, electricians and welders.
Services Sector For the period of January-September 2018, approved investments in the services sector amounted to RM69.9 billion compared with RM74.2 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2017. These investments were from a total of 2,721 projects and are expected to create 50,896 job opportunities. Domestic investments made up the largest portion, recording RM60.4 billion or 86.4% of the total approved investments for the services sector during this period. The rest or RM9.5 billion were from foreign sources. The services subsectors that showed an increase in approved investments were healthcare, education, global establishments, real estate and supporting services.
The approved investments for the supporting services sub-sector recorded a rise of 24.8% to RM4.8 billion in the first nine months of this year from RM3.9 billion in the corresponding period last year. The bulk of the approved investments were from green technology activities with investments of RM2.7 billion, whereby 96.8% were from domestic investments. These activities were led by energy generation projects with approved investments of RM2.4 billion, followed by energy conservation (RM120.1 million), green services (RM91.7 million), green building (RM23.8 million) and waste management projects (RM16 million).
A notable energy generation project that was approved during this period is an expansion project by Tadau Energy. According to its Managing Director, Ms Susanna Lim, “Our base in Kudat, Sabah is an ideal location for a solar power plant as the northern Sabah district has clear and unpolluted skies, and gets a large amount of direct sunlight. The development of this project has the greatest potential for Malaysia especially Sabah to transition to clean energy as it will save the environment from approximately 50,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission and can power more than 30,000 homes annually. Overall, the company has created more than 200 job opportunities for the local community.”
Approved investments for global establishments also saw an increase of 95.7% during the first nine months of 2018. MIDA approved 149 projects proposing to make Malaysia their Principal Hubs, Regional Offices or Representative Offices. Investments in these projects amounted to RM4.1 billion, with significant spin-off effects on the economy. These activities are expected to create job opportunities for 1,598 knowledge-based or highly technical-skilled workers, as well as positioning Malaysia on course for greater integration into the global supply chains/global value chains.
Out of the total, MIDA has approved four Principal Hubs with investments worth RM3.8 billion. Among them is a business venture by Jobstreet.com, a leading online employment marketplace in Asia. “After having merged with a Hong Kong based company in 2014, Jobstreet had an important task to decide where to locate the Principal Hub of the newly created venture. Malaysia was chosen because it is strategically located in the region, enjoys strong government support in the technology industry as well as the availability of incentive to help businesses like JobStreet. Our investment in Malaysia will also bring tangible benefits to the country, through the creation of employment especially in high value and managerial positions and, our capital and operational spending will allow us to contribute back to the economy,” said Mr Jakson Peters, the company’s Chief Financial Officer.
Primary Sector In January – September 2018, the primary sector attracted investments worth RM10.3 billion or 7.4% of total approved investments in this period. This sector comprises three main sub-sectors namely agriculture, mining and, plantation and commodities. Investments by foreign sources totalled RM5.8 billion (56.3%) while domestic investments contributed RM4.5 billion (43.7%). The mining sub-sector took the lead with approved investments of RM9.7 billion in 22 projects, followed by the plantation and commodities sub-sector with investments of RM501.5 million, and the agriculture sub-sector making up the rest of approved investments.
The Government will ensure that the Malaysian economy remains on a sustainable growth trajectory by providing a conducive and favourable environment to attract investors and businesses. Quality FDI continues to assume an important role in the development of Malaysia due to its multiplier impact on the economy. The strong presence of foreign investments in the manufacturing sector, in particular, has helped to enlarge the market through the growth of the local supply chain ecosystem and related services industry. MIDA continues to urge industries to leverage on growing opportunities by embracing advanced technology to enhance productivity and competitiveness.
Finance minister Lim Guan Eng has announced that from January 1, 2019, fuel prices, including for RON 95 petrol, will be floated and set on a weekly basis.
The price of RON 95 petrol has remained unchanged at RM2.20 per litre, and the same applies to diesel as well – Euro 2M diesel retails at RM2.18 per litre, while Euro 5 diesel goes for RM2.28 per litre.
Meanwhile, the price of Ron97 was on an average monthly basis, however, starting from the month of December 2018, Ron 97 is being sold at pumps for RM 2.50 per litre.
Finance Minister, Lim Guan Eng said that the switch back to a weekly format was a positive move that will allow consumers to benefit faster from reductions in the fuel prices. According to Lim, the government will adjust fuel prices to be lower from January 1st, 2019. This is due to the current declining trend of global crude oil prices.
Lim also mentioned that should global crude oil prices observe a rise, the government will maintain the price of RON 95 petrol and diesel at RM 2.20 per litre and RM 2.18 per litre respectively. The Finance Minister noted that RM 5.82 billion has been spent to subsidise petrol products from May to November this year.
GWS Production AB, Sweden and Expat Preventive in Netherlands, have signed an agreement, in order to provide the market with the best solution for travel risk management.
GWS will be the technical platform provider and Expat Preventive the travel security, medical advice and assistance.
GWS is an international IT-company and has developed Safeture, a security platform and a risk management tool for companies and business travelers. The platform is already used globally by more than 1,000 major companies.
Expat Preventive helps companies, government institutions and non-profit organizations that put the safety of their employees first with intensive safety and security training, developing a well-suited policy and direct support after an incident.
The cooperation between GWS and Expat Preventive will enable customers to fulfil their Duty of Care in the most modern way and their task to advise and support travellers and expats before, during and after their travels or stay abroad.
The travel security platform from GWS with country information and alerts, positioning and mass notification functionalities will, together with Expat Preventive security training, medical advice, emergency numbers and aftercare will be the new standard in the market.
“In GWS we have found a highly reliable partner for a next generation travel security platform “, comments Christiaan Oldenkamp, CEO Expat Preventive.
“We are process and behaviour specialists in travel security that need a technology expert and we believe that in this partnership we can complement each other to deliver the best one stop shop solution for our customers”.
“Expat Preventive is a good match for GWS. Expat Preventives expert knowledge in implementing security processes is key when integrating our platform into larger organizations security routines.” comments Andreas Rodman, CEO GWS.
