Open For Business

BFM Media

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

    From Bugs to Bursa? Pet World's Ambitious Next Chapter

    When Choy Peng Yew last appeared on the show in early 2023, Pet World was on a massive growth trajectory. As Malaysia's largest homegrown pet food manufacturer behind household brands like ProDiet, ProBalance, and Delizios, the company was scaling at an impressive 27% CAGR. At the time, financial headlines were buzzing about a potential US$100M public listing in Singapore. However, the IPO never materialised. Instead, the company shifted its mandate from public markets toward strategic partnerships and private expansion. Amidst this corporate restructuring, Pet World quietly accomplished something entirely unexpected. Producing over 100,000 tonnes of pet food annually, the company partnered with SPCA Selangor and Singapore-based Nutrition Technologies to formulate Malaysia's first dog food using Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) protein. This leap into sustainable, insect-based nutrition signals a major shift in the company's product direction and their approach to the evolving global pet wellness market. Choy Peng Yew returns to the studio to unpack what the last two years have actually looked like from the inside. We discuss the strategic decision to pursue regional partnerships over a public listing, the science and commercial viability behind sustainable insect protein, and the company's aggressive expansion strategy across Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East as they navigate the pet food market in 2026. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    29 min

  2. 2d ago

    Hata: $8M Series A, Bybit CEO Backing, & New Crypto

    Fresh off an $8 million Series A funding round co-led personally by the CEO of Bybit, David Low, Co-Founder and CEO of Hata, unpacks what’s next for this young crypto exchange.  We discuss how the platform accumulated over 225,000 users and passed RM100 million in assets under custody, the heavy capital requirements needed to incentivise professional market makers for deep order-book liquidity, and how they cleaned up their cap table to streamline corporate execution. David also shares how Hata is actively de-risking its business from market volatility by shifting away from purely activity-based trading fees toward institutional custody solutions, staking products, and hands-on corporate B2B onboarding.  Finally, we explore the Securities Commission's newly updated regulatory guidelines, explaining why faster coin-listing paths coupled with higher capital requirements are a net positive for maturing Malaysia's Web3 ecosystem. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    39 min

  3. 4d ago

    26 Years, 15 Films & the Business No One Tells You About

    Red Communications has been running since 1999 — 26 years of producing television, film, branded content, and digital programming for audiences that the industry had largely ignored: women, young people, families. The 3R show ran for 15 years and was funded entirely by sponsors. Gol & Gincu became a film and a TV series. Kami did the same. Oh My English ran for six years on Astro. Club Mickey Mouse ran for five years on Disney. The company has produced 14 films. The 15th, Khadam, opens in cinemas on 11 June 2026. Between the first film and the 15th: a breast cancer diagnosis in 2012, a six-month treatment hiatus during which RM1 million in reserves disappeared and RM1 million in debt appeared, a pandemic that nearly took the company, and a decision to sell a stake to Astro just to stay afloat. Founder and Executive Producer of Red Communications Lina Tan talks to us about what the business of creativity actually looks like — the budgets, the red tape, the streaming disruption, the influencer competition, and the specific madness of trying to get a Malaysian film made and seen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    56 min

  4. 5d ago

    The RM100M Bet on Automated Parking

    In Japan and South Korea, parking a car is entirely automated. You drive into a bay, turn off your engine, and walk away while a robotic system lifts and stores your vehicle in a multi-level tower. There are no ramps, no circling for spots, and no wasted space. Yet in Malaysia, this highly efficient infrastructure remains virtually unseen. Ir. Yow Kai Yong has spent the last 14 years trying to change that. A consultant engineer with two decades of experience in Malaysia's property development sector, he started Parktech Solutions in 2011 with four other co-founders. As co-founders eventually left due to a sluggish market, he became the last person standing, officially taking over the company in 2021. Today, that persistence is paying off in a massive way. Parktech Solutions is now preparing to install one of the largest automated car parking systems in ASEAN at Milla Residence in Wangsa Maju. Built in partnership with Beverly Group and South Korea's Samjung Tech, the project features 2,358 bays and 21 car lifts, pushing the company's order book to a RM100 million. Kai Yong joins us to discuss the business and mechanics of automated car parking systems. We cover what it takes to survive for over a decade pushing a product the local market wasn't ready for, the sudden shift driving their eight-figure revenue projections for 2026, and why robotic parking is no longer just a luxury convenience, but a critical sustainability and urban density play that Malaysian developers can no longer ignore. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    28 min

  5. Jun 4

    The Farm That Heals What Classrooms Can't

    After a 30-year career at PETRONAS, a pandemic-induced mental health challenge pushed Zalina Abdul Rahim to completely rethink her retirement. Retreating to her family's farm in Hulu Langat, she witnessed three distinct crises converging at once: a generation of city children completely disconnected from nature, neighbouring farmers losing their entire harvests to lockdowns, and devastating local floods that demanded immediate community action. Her response was not a casual retirement hobby. In 2021, Zalina launched Ekar Lui Farm School, a bootstrapped enterprise offering STEM and sustainability-based learning in a real-world agricultural setting. Catering to mainstream schools, corporate leadership programmes, and neurodivergent children, the social enterprise has proven its market demand, growing its operations by 200 percent in 2025 without a single ringgit of external investment. Zalina talks to us about the tight unit economics of keeping animals fed and children engaged on a bootstrapped budget, how she gained access to grants and collaborations which helped accelerate growth, and what it takes to build a viable ESG education hub that prioritises purpose over pure profit. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    25 min

  6. Jun 3

    Building a Six-Figure Global AI Agency Before Graduation

    The enterprise AI market is currently flooded with polished demos, confident sales pitches, and massive invoices. But behind the scenes, many of these highly touted agents and automation platforms break the moment they encounter real data, real users, and edge cases. Genta AI Solutions has been hired repeatedly to fix this exact problem, stepping in to replace failing AI systems built by other vendors. It is a costly industry reality that most tech companies refuse to talk about. What makes this story unusual is the person telling it. Mahmoud Ashraf (Komy) is a 22-year-old final-year cybersecurity student at Asia Pacific University in Kuala Lumpur. He founded Genta in late 2024 and bootstrapped it to high six-figure revenues in under a year with zero ad spend. Serving enterprise clients across the US and Europe, Genta builds custom AI agents with a strict "no platform lock-in" policy, ensuring clients actually own the infrastructure that gets built. Komy joins us to expose the growing gap between AI marketing and actual AI engineering. We discuss what it really takes to build reliable artificial intelligence for operations-heavy businesses, why client ownership is becoming the ultimate dealbreaker in enterprise procurement, and how he navigates the grueling balance of running a scaling global business while completing his final year of university. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    29 min

  7. Jun 2

    The Robot Revolution On The Retail Floor

    Edwin Yap's family built the physical infrastructure of retail. As the leaders of Jemco Group, they grew the family business into Malaysia's largest producer of the shelving, racking, and logistics systems that hold supermarkets and warehouses together across Southeast Asia. Taking over the company during the pandemic, Edwin spent years observing the shop floor and realised the next essential layer of retail infrastructure wouldn't be a static fixture. It would be a robot. To capitalise on this shift, Edwin launched MR. ROBOT, a startup betting that humanoid and service robots are moving from science fiction to the shop floor faster than most business leaders realise. He recently secured a US$5 million funding round from an investor lineup that includes MR D.I.Y. International, China's AgiBot, and The Hub's Investment Group, signed an MOU at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, and is now developing a RM10 million ASEAN-first robotics data collection centre to power the next generation of physical AI. Edwin joins us to unpack the business of "embodied AI", how they are already driving a 20 percent sales uplift at customer events, and the honest reality of what humanoid robots can and cannot do in 2026. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    22 min

  8. May 28

    KPJ Healthcare: 3 Million Patients, One Standard of Care.

    With a massive network of 30 hospitals serving over 3 million patients annually, KPJ Healthcare faces the massive challenge of ensuring consistent, high-quality care across facilities of varying sizes and ages. To achieve this, the group is rolling out the KPJ Health System (KPJHS) — an integrated framework designed to standardise treatment, control costs, and manage patient expectations across the entire network. Positioned as Malaysia's first private academic health system, KPJHS is built on the core pillars of practice, education, and research & innovation. By centralising highly specialised medical expertise into regional Centers of Excellence (COEs) via a hub-and-spoke model, KPJ ensures patients with complex conditions receive seamless, top-tier care without needing to repeat diagnostic tests or navigate a messy referral process.   Prof. Dato' Dr. Hanafiah Harunarashid, Chief Medical Director of KPJ Healthcare, joins us to unpack this ambitious operational transformation. We discuss the strategy behind launching 15 COEs by 2030, how a real-time clinical dashboard measures surgical outcomes against global benchmarks like the Mayo Clinic, and the five-year cultural shift required to put the patient at the absolute center of the healthcare system. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    22 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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