Open For Business

BFM Media
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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 (father of video games), Tony Buzan (Mindmap Guru), Isaac Tigrett (Hard Rock Cafe founder), Robert Kiyosaki (Financial Guru), Nick Vujicic (motivational speaker) and more. Tap into this valuable resource of shared experiences for the SME industry, which also touches on news, issues and trends affecting the business community and beyond.

  1. 1D AGO

    What A Horse Knows About Your Leadership, That You Don’t

    Malaysia's corporate training market runs on slides, seminars, and motivational talks. It is also, by most accounts, not working. Burnout is at record levels. Trust between leaders and teams is eroding. And the soft skills that make the difference — self-awareness, emotional presence, the ability to genuinely listen — are exactly the ones a classroom cannot teach. Nurul Atiqah Anuar believes the answer might be standing in a paddock. A Chartered Governance Professional who spent a decade in boardrooms across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, she co-founded Setenang — a leadership development programme built around one of the oldest non-verbal feedback systems in the world: horses. Not riding them. But standing with them, leading them, and being read by them. Atiqah joins us to talk about how a 500kg animal with no interest in your job title, your KPIs, or your quarterly results will show you — in real time and without filters — exactly who you are as a leader. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    26 min

  2. 2D AGO

    Two Childhood Friends, A Game & A Million Views in Japan

    Childhood friends and lifelong gamers Kashif Khairul and Rizal Azlan co-founded 1+1 Studios in 2024 with one conviction: that the best co-op games should bring people closer together, not just put them side by side. Their debut title, Duo Quest, is a co-op roguelite deckbuilder where your friendship is literally a game mechanic — you answer questions about each other to generate attacks, meaning the better you know your partner, the harder you hit. The game has not yet launched commercially. But it has already won an award at Gamescom Asia in Bangkok, been nominated for Best Multiplayer at Gamescom LATAM 2026, drawn over 5,000 players to a closed playtest, and gone viral in Japan with over a million views. All this from a six-person studio in Kuala Lumpur, with no external funding. Kashif and Rizal join us to discuss the gap in the co-op game market, why friendship became the design brief, what Malaysian indie developers need to break through and whether the local scene is more ready than it looks. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    41 min

  3. 3D AGO

    The Stage Has Changed. Define’s Principles Haven't.

    Andrew Anthony has been in the events industry since 1995 — when he was still in school, working as an event crewmember to fund his own education, with RM50 and a late brother who showed him the ropes. Three decades later, Define International has ran what Google called their first ever business listing activation in Malaysia, handled a landmark event involving the United States Presidential office, won gold at the MAHB Marketing Excellence Awards, launched a nine-storey ship at Keppel Shipyard in Singapore, and built a list of over 3,000 clients. And he has done all of this without a single ringgit of external investment.  Andrew joins us to discuss the RM18 billion industry that policymakers are still not taking seriously enough, the payment terms problem that has plagued the events industry for decades, and the stubbornness of doing things right. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    40 min

  4. 4D AGO

    The ESG Firm That Was 15 Years Early, Then Right On Time

    ESG guidance and advisory firm Joshua Rayan Communications (JRC) was established in 2007 with one clear conviction: that sustainability reporting should be done properly, personally, and affordably. Today, the bootstrapped, seven-figure firm boasts a near 100% client closure rate and serves corporate giants like Sunway, BAT, Ranhill, and MMC across Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.  Rather than treating ESG as a simple box-ticking reporting exercise, JRC provides end-to-end advisory. Using a unique "vanguard system" where senior leaders remain actively involved in project execution, they help clients identify critical data gaps long before a final report is drafted.   Founder and CEO Joshua Rayan joins us to unpack the business of sustainability reporting in a highly competitive market. We discuss running a 20-person consultancy with a "no-boss" culture, why homegrown ESG practitioners want to be more actively engaged in national policy and standard-setting rooms, and the firm’s ambitious five-year roadmap toward an IPO. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    29 min

  5. 5D AGO

    Two Pilots, A Grill & A Burger Place

    In November 2022, two grounded pilots came on Open For Business to talk about a smash burger stall they'd started from a home kitchen during the pandemic. The story was charming — airline pilots flipping burgers at night markets — but the business was still early, still scrappy, still unproven. A lot has changed since then. Grill Haven now has a proper restaurant in Plaza Damansara, Bukit Damansara. FY2025 revenue hit RM3.65 million, up some 48% year-on-year. The team has been to Japan, twice. And they have their sights set on Johor, Penang, and a multi-brand F&B empire.  We catch up with co-founder First Officer Afiq Nazar to find out what the last three years actually looked like from the inside — the discipline, the growing pains, and whether two pilots can really build a restaurant group without choosing between the cockpit and the kitchen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    30 min

  6. MAY 14

    The Immigrant Story Behind America's Most Unlikely Aerospace Company

    In 1977, Theresa Padilla moved from Mexico to the United States with nothing. Three years later, she took a job as a press operator at a small plastics company in Oxnard, California. That company was Rakar Inc. - founded in 1951 to make electrical connectors and insulators for the US military. Forty years later, she bought it. Today, Rakar is a Tier 2 supplier to NASA, Boeing, SpaceX, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the US Defense Logistics Agency. Theresa's son Diego, Executive Vice President and Advanced Manufacturing Lead, runs strategy and communications alongside her. This is the story of an immigrant woman who rose from the factory floor to run one of America's most specialised aerospace suppliers,  and why she believes Malaysia is the next chapter. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    39 min

  7. MAY 13

    Not a Nursing Home. Not a Daycare. Something Better.

    By 2048, Malaysia will officially be an aged nation, yet currently, only 14.7 percent of our elderly are actually ageing healthily. The traditional eldercare market is almost entirely focused on clinical nursing homes, leaving a massive gap for seniors who are medically stable but socially isolated. After witnessing this crisis firsthand in the home care sector, co-founders Gan Pooi Chan and Sandyeep Sandhu realised the real crisis in the care economy wasn't just a shortage of medical beds — it was a severe shortage of belonging. To solve this, PC and Sandyeep launched Kampungku in 2023. Actively rejecting the traditional "daycare" label, they built an engaging clubhouse where independent seniors can exercise, socialise, and rebuild their community on their own terms. Treating seniors as active participants rather than patients has proven to be a highly viable business model, with the company reaching full profitability and stabilising at a 15 percent quarter-on-quarter growth rate. PC and Sandy join us to unpack the dynamics of preventative eldercare and the structural challenges facing the industry. We discuss why lumping active senior centres into the same tax category as beauty and wellness is an unfair policy burdening middle-class families, the looming 60 percent nursing shortage threatening the sector, and a highly anticipated "larger-than-life" partnership that could completely change the scale of Kampungku's operations. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    40 min

  8. MAY 12

    The LEGO Alternative That Went Global Before It Had An Office

    LEGO is one of the most valuable toy brands in the world. It is also, for a large portion of its most devoted fans, out of reach — either because the official sets don't go far enough in complexity, or because building a truly ambitious custom creation costs a small fortune in loose bricks. EasternBrick was built to solve that problem. Founded by Wong Keit Sean & Bilal Raja — both veterans of Lumos, the smart bicycle helmet startup that raised USD 2.9 million on Kickstarter and made Oprah's Favourite Things list — EasternBrick is a LEGO-compatible brick company focused on large, complex sets for adults. Sets that go where LEGO doesn't. But EasternBrick is not just another alternative brick brand. It's also a quiet act of justice for the independent designers whose creations get stolen by cheap factories and sold without credit or compensation. Sean and Bilal talk to us about building a global D2C business from Malaysia with zero paid marketing, low-seven-figure revenue in under six months, and a pre-order model that has kept the business profitable from day one. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    35 min
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About

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 (father of video games), Tony Buzan (Mindmap Guru), Isaac Tigrett (Hard Rock Cafe founder), Robert Kiyosaki (Financial Guru), Nick Vujicic (motivational speaker) and more. Tap into this valuable resource of shared experiences for the SME industry, which also touches on news, issues and trends affecting the business community and beyond.

Information

  • Creator
    BFM Media
  • Years Active
    2010 - 2026
  • Episodes
    2K
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 BFM Media Sdn Bhd
  • Show Website
    Open For Business

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