Open For Business

Founded by Amy Cox Blair, award-winning social enterprise Batik Boutique trains women from low-income backgrounds here in KL to produce gifts and fashion accessories made from batik. She has a production centre where these women convene everyday to design and sew some truly beautiful hand made products - so you would think with the MCO, all this would come to a grinding halt. I can tell you now, it has not.

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ATX Sdn. Bhd. is an MSC status company specialising in the IT, Telecommunication and Services industry in Malaysia. Their core business is in developing solutions and value added services for various sectors, and they work very closely with traditional retailers and mom and pop shops, to provide them with solutions to do mobile reloads from their shops, perform bills payment transactions, remittance and even purchase goods online. 

So what happens when your customers close shop? According to CEO of ATX, Sashie Kumar, you pivot.

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ServisHero is one of the leading professional service marketplace for home and office. With operations around the region, they had some aggressive plans for the year 2020. But as the COVID-19 virus started to spread into the region, they slowly saw a dip in core business. To make matters worse, the first week of MCO saw their business dropped 90% in revenue. And thus Disinfection2u.com was born within 36 hours. They now have disinfected over a million square feet in less than 2 weeks of operation. We speak to Karl Loo on how he managed to turn around his business in such a short space of time and the challenges in those 2 days of pivoting.

ServisHero is part of Alliance Bank's #SupportLokal campaign.

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Going digital is probably the most feasible way to maintain some sort of cash flow for your business. However, not many had a strong digital presence before the MCO hit, which is why many smaller F&B operators have been using platforms like WhatsApp for the ordering of meals or products. While this is certainly a good step, it's definitely not sustainable and causes a disruption in business processes.

Kimberly Wan saw the gap in the market and quickly co-founded Otomate Me, a software acting as a service company that helps companies of all sizes to personalise and automate their outreach. Hear more about it on today's Voice of SMEs. 

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VMO is an events booking online platform to help you with everything you need for any types of events, be it corporate functions or personal ocassions like weddings and birthdays. Over the course of the years in operations, they have grown to over 2,000 listings just before the MCO. We got in touch with Vincent Kok, the Founder of VMO, who talks about how he not only created or pivoted his business during this time but also raised funds to grow the company. 

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Boutique gyms have been on the rise worldwide, as they have here in Malaysia, and one such gym is based here in KL. The Ministry of Burn, or MOB. They have two outlets, one in Bangsar South, whilst the other is in Damansara Heights. They mainly offer group fitness classes such as indoor cycling, HIIT, Yoga and Dance. Part of the appeal of these types of gyms is their sense of community spirit and their ‘can do’ attitude. It’s infectious. But what do you do as a business when you’re told that you can’t open your doors to let people in to workout and keep fit? 

We catch up with the General Manager of the Ministry of Burn, Janell Tan, to get her thoughts.

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 A couple of weeks ago, the Malaysian Association of Film Exhibitors or MAFE announced that all major cinemas would remain closed until the end of April regardless of the MCO. To expand on this, we got in touch with Koh Mei Lee, CEO of Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) to talk about the state of local cinemas at the moment.

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With the announcement that the MCO has been extended, entrepreneurs and their employees are feeling the pinch of having to work from home and struggle through another 2 weeks of business unusual. How do you motivate your staff? How do you set boundaries when you work from home?

In this webinar, we spoke to Hetal Doshi (O PSYCH), Derek Toh (WOBB), and Kim Lim (PichaEats) about managing your mental health and motivation in the workplace during this pandemic.

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With the announcement that the MCO has been extended, entrepreneurs and their employees are feeling the pinch of having to work from home and struggle through another 2 weeks of business unusual. How do you motivate your staff? How do you set boundaries when you work from home?

In this webinar, we spoke to Hetal Doshi (O PSYCH), Derek Toh (WOBB), and Kim Lim (PichaEats) about managing your mental health and motivation in the workplace during this pandemic.