Open For Business
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Open For Business
The flagship entrepreneurship show on BFM, featuring personal business stories from early stage start-ups, all the way to billionaire octogenarians in Malaysia and abroad. Notable guests include Martin Cooper (father of the mobile phone), Julian Assange (founder of WikiLeaks), Ralph Henry Baer (fath...
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Pulling The Rug From Tradition
For many heirs in Malaysia’s family businesses, the biggest decision is not how to grow what they inherit, but whether to stay at all. Kelvin Khandhar...
Battery Subscription For Commercial Vehicles?
What if your truck battery never failed again?
For a logistics firm, a dead battery is more than just a nuisance, it’s a broken timeline,...
Can A Catering Business Really Scale? RunningMen Did
Building a catering business is easy to start, and notoriously hard to scale. For Andrew Chee, Founder and CEO of RunningMen Celebrations Group, the c...
The Business of Slow Blooms: Why Nook Flowers is Choosing Principles Over Profits
In an industry often defined by high-speed logistics and international imports, Brenda James of Nook Flowers is carving out a different path in Malays...
It’s Not About Coffee. How ZUS Beat Starbucks.
From a single kiosk to beating Starbucks and becoming Malaysia’s largest coffee chain in just 6 years.
The journey began just months before the...
Can This Startup Rewire Medical Tourism?
Malaysia has top hospitals, competitive pricing, and a strong reputation in medical tourism yet much of the demand is still controlled by foreign inte...
Her Duit: Why Money Is No Longer Enough
What do you do when you’ve built a loyal audience and 5 years of momentum, but you feel trapped by the very niche that built you?
Michelle Chin,...
Her Duit: Why Money Is No Longer Enough
What do you do when you’ve built a loyal audience and 5 years of momentum, but you feel trapped by the very niche that built you?
Michelle Chin,...
Applecrumby’s New Chapter: Scaling Past E-Commerce
Two years ago, Applecrumby was navigating its transition from a long bootstrapped journey into its next growth phase. Today, the company is expanding...
How This Marketer is Turning Practitioners to Paid Professionals
Many professionals have deep expertise but struggle to turn that into a credible, sustainable career as a trainer, facilitator, or industry practition...
Turning Banking Apps Into Billboards? The Buzz Pivot
In 2022, brothers Joshua and Joel Lim set out to eliminate single-use plastics with BeeBag, a gamified reusable bag venture. But after facing a hard t...
Scaling the Sweet Spot: The Discipline of Gula Cakery
In an F&B landscape often defined by rapid burnout and aggressive discounting, Arieni Ritzal has taken a different path. Since her last visit to the s...
Building Huddle: AirUpThere’s Startup Journey
Grassroots sports have always had the talent, the passion, and the stories but rarely the technology.
AirUpThere Technologies is trying t...
From Gaming Chairs to Building Ergonomic Lifestyles
Two years ago, TTRacing was already a fast-growing gaming chair brand making its mark across Southeast Asia. Since then, the business has continued to...
1.9 Million Empty Homes: How Urby Rescues the Ruins
1.9 million. That’s how many living quarters are vacant here in Malaysia, nearly 20% of the total, according to the 2020 Census. This puts hard number...
Milk, Money, and Kid-Genius Ideas
What does it really take to bridge the gap between a child’s imagination and a viable business model?
In this episode of Open For Busines...
Halogen's Crypto Moat? 0 to RM400M AUM in 3 Years
Is it possible to reduce an investment portfolio's risk by adding a highly volatile asset like Bitcoin? Halogen Capital Co-Founders Hann Liew and Luca...
Bonus Checks and Bass Lines
What does it take to build a business when the stakes are high and your time is already accounted for?
In this episode of Open For Busin...
When Passion Gets Professional
What does it really take to turn passion into a sustainable business?
In this episode of Open For Business, we sit down with Janice Siew,...
From 2 AM Curry Puffs to Siti Li: 23 Years of F&B Survival
The F&B industry is often romanticised, but for Shareen Ramli, the reality is far grittier. Yet, for 23 years, she has stayed in the game, evolving fr...
From Cargo Drones To Passenger In The Sky
In this episode of Open For Business, we sit down with Dr Shian Lee, the aerospace engineer behind Alphaswift Industries.
This is not a shiny dr...
$176M: How an “Accidental Founder” Built Doctor Anywhere
Founded in 2017 as a simple telemedicine app, Doctor Anywhere (DA) became a pandemic darling, raising nearly $176 million from heavyweights like IHH H...
Old Recipes, New Ambitions: How Hock Kee Kopitiam Is Expanding
How do you turn nostalgia into a scalable business in one of Malaysia’s most crowded food and beverage markets?
On this episode of Open F...
Anti-Coworking, by Design
In this episode of Open For Business, we look at why coworking seems to have lost its way and whether a quieter, more stripped-back model is the answe...
Suing Trump’s White House: Has Costco Cracked the Code?
In late November, Costco filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the “Liberation Day tariffs", and the White House remained surprisingly...
FeedMe: The Operating System For Better Dining
Restaurants are under pressure like never before like rising costs, staff shortages, shrinking margins, and systems that were never designed for today...
10 Years of APOM: From Selling Tees to “Rebranding Malaysia”
In 2015, advertising veterans Chantelle Teoh and Kelvin Long grew tired of the generic, "embarrassing" souvenirs found at Central Market. They wanted...
Sagtec: From POS Systems to NASDAQ & A 50% Stock Drop
Founded in 2018, Sagtec Global Limited was a three-person operation in Kuala Lumpur, aiming to digitise Malaysia's F&B sector. Fast forward to March 2...
Greening The Grey — A Farm In The City
On this episode of Open For Business, we speak with Paul Dass, Managing Director of Green Street Farms, about what it means to grow food with care in...
No Equity, No Fee Accelerator? AppWorks’ Deal Flow Engine
Startup accelerators are everywhere, but few operate like AppWorks. Based in Taiwan with a sizable footprint in Southeast Asia, the firm runs an accel...
Morgan Stanley to Fintech: Helicap’s Private Credit Play
Private credit has exploded over the last decade. But is it a necessary structural shift or a "shadow banking" bubble waiting to pop?
Dav...
Can Ted Optimus Fix Retail Investing?
Malaysians are investing more than ever, but many are doing so in a market flooded with hype, social media tips, and unverified “gurus.” The result? E...
AI Startups: Why Distribution is the Only Moat Left
While skeptics dismiss the current wave of startups as mere AI 'wrappers,' a grassroots movement in Kuala Lumpur is ignoring the noise and building an...
Nomad Capitalist: Building a Life Where You’re Treated Best
For many entrepreneurs, the idea of living and working anywhere in the world is the ultimate goal. But for Andrew Henderson, it’s more than a dream—it...
Replacing Microsoft Office with Memes? Inside Agnes AI
The AI sector is frothy, filled with "wrappers" disguised as deep tech and companies blurring the line between innovation and snake oil. Yet, Agnes AI...
Being SME-First: How HitPay Scaled to $1B Volumes
The Southeast Asian payments landscape is a fierce battleground, crowded with global giants like Stripe and Adyen, regional heavyweights, and local ga...
Turning Buffet Waste Into A Business
When most people think of buffets, they think of indulgence, not innovation. But for treatsure Co-Founder and CEO Preston Wong, surplus food became a...
From Paper to AI: Why Arkmind is Digitising Money Lenders
The non-bank lending industry, comprising licensed money lenders, pawnshops, and used car dealers, often operates on paper ledgers and Excel sheets. J...
The HOPE Box That Started a Movement
Prof. Dr. Billy Tang’s journey from paraplegic farmer to global changemaker is at the heart of PWD Smart FarmAbility, a disability-led social enterpri...
Series A, B, Then Exit? Why SEA Has a $400M Exit Ceiling
While the rest of Southeast Asia was chasing the "super app" dream and burning cash on subsidies, Qualgro took a different path. For the last decade,...