Shoppers are turning to e-commerce platforms for almost everything, from groceries and clothes to furniture and car parts. But is it easy for local merchants to do business on them? Are the platforms helping sellers find customers and fulfil orders, or are sellers being squeezed for every sen? With Chinese platforms now entering the market, what's at stake for local merchants?

Dr Sunny Ooi, Founder and CEO of ClickAsia and President of Internet Alliance Malaysia, and Gary Ng, Co-founder and CEO of modest fashion brand ZUCCA, join us to discuss.

We get into:

• The fees: How platform fees have climbed, with Shopee's new 5% support fee and Lazada revising commissions three times in under a year, and what a seller is left with after paying them.

• Beyond fees: What else squeezes sellers, from paying for ads and the pressure to keep livestreaming, to disputes with buyers and having no access to customer data.

• The China factor: How Pinduoduo, nine months into the market, is affecting local sellers, with one SME association reporting sales drops of up to 30%.

• The government response: What a regulatory framework for ecommerce platforms should include

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How does a business coach add value to a leader that a mentor doesn't? Every CEO is told at some point in their career to find a mentor. But some business leaders choose something different, a professional coach, with a different set of mechanics, expectations, and accountability.

Adrian Ung, Chair and Business Coach at Vistage, and Jess Au, CEO of TPO Kitchen, who designs commercial kitchens for F&B brands and works with Adrian as her coach, talks about: 

• Mentor vs coach: The core difference in mechanics between the two

• Why Jess chose a coach: The specific triggers that led her to invest in a business coach rather than relying on mentors or industry peers.

• Guiding without directing: How a coach helps a CEO through complex strategy without stepping into the operator role or prescribing the fix.

• What it looks like in practice: A specific moment coaching forced a critical pivot for Jess, and the most uncomfortable part of the process for her.

• Is it worth it: How to evaluate the tangible returns of a coach beyond top-line revenue, and how a CEO can tell if they're actually ready for one.

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The haze is back, and it's a reminder of the real cost of climate risk. The World Bank says Malaysia could lose up to 8.3% of GDP by 2050 in a worst-case climate scenario, with roughly half of that impact already showing up in the data today. Malaysia is also estimated to need about RM3.5 trillion for climate adaptation and resilience financing to avoid that scenario.

Jimmy Tee, Partner, Sustainability and Climate Change and Financial Services Assurance at PwC Malaysia, discusses what climate risk actually means for a business, and what owners can practically do about it.

We get into:

• The exposure right now: Which Malaysian industries are most exposed to climate risk, and how businesses are already being affected today, not in 2050.

• The insurance gap: Why two-thirds of an estimated RM4 billion in losses from the 2021 floods were never insured, and whether suitable cover even exists.

• Building resilience: What actually building resilience looks like on the ground, and whether it requires major capital spend or smaller, lower-cost steps.

• The cost of doing nothing: Whether inaction itself is a risk, and where the opportunity is hiding inside what looks like a cost.

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Brent crude oil prices have swung sharply this year. They spiked past $110 in March, fell back to around $70 by July on US-Iran peace-talk optimism, then surged again past $100 through August and September as fighting between the US and Iran resumed.

In Malaysia, unsubsidised RON97 and RON95 petrol prices are rising by 20 sen per litre, and unsubsidised diesel by 15 sen, from mid-September. With the war dragging on far longer than most expected, should fuel prices in Malaysia already be higher than they are?

Woon Khai Jhek, Senior Economist at RAM Rating Services, tells us what's keeping oil prices contained, what the outlook looks like, and what it all means for Malaysia's economy.

We get into:

• What's driving oil price swings: The war-related supply shocks behind this year's price spikes, including a US Strategic Petroleum Reserve at its lowest level since 1983.

• Oil supply: Whether US control over Venezuela's oil following Maduro's removal could meaningfully boost global supply, and what other responses, from OPEC+ to US shale, are actually moving the needle.

• Malaysia's balancing act: Whether the country gains more from higher oil prices through Petronas and petroleum-related taxes than it loses through subsidies and import costs.

• Budget 2027: What to expect and the general outlook for Malaysia's economy heading into the rest of the year.

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In the US, DEI programmes are being dismantled. But what if walking away from inclusion means walking away from your next big customer segment?

Sudesh Thevasenabathy, Head of Inclusion for Asia and Global Lead of Inclusive Business at Manulife, makes the business case for designing around the customers everyone else overlooks.

We get into why unintentional exclusion is hard to spot in the business world, and what it took to design insurance policies for people living with HIV, people with disabilities, and women navigating menopause across 11 Asian markets, including how he convinced leadership to back an unproven market.

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European rail holidays are on the rise, with demand also coming from Southeast Asia, where more travellers are booking multi-country European rail itineraries than before.

Frank Marini, from Railbookers Group, joins us to unpack what's driving this trend, what appeals to travellers, and the business behind delivering a complete multi-country rail holiday.

We get into:

• Why rail travel is booming among younger travellers, and what's different about Southeast Asian travellers compared to their Western counterparts.

• The operational complexity of sequencing rail travel across different countries, booking systems, and ticketing rules, and how Railbookers guarantees prices years in advance despite operators releasing pricing and seat schedules just months out.

• What it takes to run Railbookers as a 100% remote global company while rolling out rail travel products globally.

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Indigenous communities make up roughly 5% of the world's population, but they hold generations of knowledge about the plants around them. Historically, very little of that value has made its way back to the communities the knowledge actually came from.

Chef James Won, a French-knighted chef and founder of Serumpun Sarawak, a UNESCO-endorsed conservation movement working with the Sarawak state government to document and protect the food knowledge of Borneo's 34 ethnic communities talks about the commercial value of Sarawak’s indigenous produce. 

We get into:

• Conservation economics: How commercialisation and conservation can actually work together.

• What's in it for indigenous communities: James describes himself as only a temporary custodian of Serumpun Sarawak's IP, with produce and ownership belonging to the indigenous communities. 

• Going global: What James learned about promoting a local ingredient internationally.

• Ingredients to watch: Which indigenous ingredients he believes are ready for export, and the challenges standing in the way.

• Responsible sourcing: What a business should put in place to source and export an indigenous ingredient in a way that benefits the community it came from, not just the exporter.

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The US 10-year Treasury yield breached the psychologically significant 5% mark in mid-September, and it could keep climbing. Is the sell-off of US bonds the start of a longer trend, or a storm that will soon pass? And what does it mean for Malaysia's own borrowing costs and bond market?

We get into:

• What's driving the spike: Inflation risk, foreign selling, and fiscal concerns behind the surge in yields, and why Barnabas sees these drivers as largely transitory rather than structural.

• Brent Oil Prices: Why he expects Brent to ease back to around $85 by year-end, even with tensions still simmering in the Middle East.

• Who's selling, and why it matters: Why the sell-off looks concentrated in Japan and Greater China, and what that tells us about how serious it really is.

• Echoes of 1981: Whether today's environment has anything in common with the last time US yields ran this high, and what eventually broke that cycle.

• What it means for Malaysia: How a US Treasury sell-off could push 10-year MGS yields higher, whether Bank Negara is closer to a rate hike, and why foreign inflows into Malaysian bonds are holding up despite the global bond rout.

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If you're an SME owner, here's a number to pay attention to: RM3 million. That's the new e-Invoicing exemption threshold that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced during his Merdeka address at the end of August, the second time this threshold has moved in under a year.

Soh Lian Seng, Head of Tax at KPMG Malaysia, talks about what this shifting compliance landscape means for SMEs, and what businesses should be doing now to keep up.

We get into:

• The moving threshold: The e-Invoicing exemption line has shifted three times in under nine months, from RM500,000 to RM1 million to RM3 million, exempting over a million businesses.

• The sunk cost problem: What happens to businesses that invested early in accounting software and training, only to find themselves exempt entirely.

• The oversight trade-off: Whether exempting so many businesses undercuts the government's goal of real-time tax visibility.

• GST vs SST: Whether folding GST-style features like input tax credits into SST is actually workable.

• The voluntary disclosure windows: What to do now, with the Stamp Duty Voluntary Disclosure Programme deadline approaching and a longer runway on the e-Invoicing Special Voluntary Disclosure Programme.

• SST's wider net: What SMEs need to check now that SST covers more goods and services.

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As we mark Malaysia Day on September 16, we look at how businesses are growing across East Malaysia. Malaysian SMEs are often discussed as one broad group, but what does it actually take to build and scale a business in Sabah and Sarawak, and how different is that experience from Peninsular Malaysia?

Theophilus Wong, Sarawak State Chairman and National Deputy Treasurer of SAMENTA, describes the SME landscape in East Malaysia. We get into the challenges preventing East Malaysian SMEs from scaling, and where their next growth opportunities lie.

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