Open For Business

Today on Voice of SMEs, we were joined by Mallory Loone, co-founder and lead trainer at Work Inspires, a people engagement company. She shared a slightly different perspective on the MCO extension, that hopefully helps  "MCO Monday" sound a bit more like "Motivational Monday" again. 

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People Systems Consultancy is one of the oldest social enterprises in Malaysia with over 15 years of experience. Executive director Raymond Gabriel shares his thoughts on how social enterprises and NGOs can work through periods of crisis and how PSC themselves have adapted to operating during the COVID-19 pandemic & Movement Control Order.

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Up until recently, NGOs and social enterprises were helping these communities make sense of COVID-19 and the Movement Control Order. That was, until the government put a stop-work order on all these initiatives to enforce social distancing. While this is a necessary move, some might argue that a single body may not be sufficient in keeping marginalized communities from going hungry in the coming weeks. Joycelyn Lee, Co-Founder of PitStop Community Cafe shares with us how, as a social enterprise, they too have been forced to “close shop” because of all the restrictions in place. 

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Some companies have stepped up to offer some services. But there are simple solutions too - like a Facebook group.

Sara Jalil Low and 2 of her friends decided that it might be a good idea to set up a Facebook group that would help them find the food that they wanted, using local food producers and helping to bridge that gap between food operators and customers - and the called it ‘MY Food Directory and Delivery C19’.

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In our second episode of Extraordinary Endeavor, we hear from Chari TVT, Senior Advisor at Duff & Phelps answering questions from Aaron Patel, Founder & CEO of iHandal about cash flow to sustain your business during this Movement Control Order.

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Today we speak to Ms. Lim Ee Huang, Managing Director of Do Re Mi Services & Rental; they're the go-to for event production, concert events, and they have a retail front selling sound equipment on how their business has been heavily affected by the current pandemic.

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Madison Technologies is a product development outfit that normally focuses on various other products and helping others to create and develop their products, but they wanted to find a way to help out in the current crisis. 

So they created an easy to roll out contact tracing network for communities called CovCT, designed to help contact tracing personnel to do their job more efficiently. CEO & Co Founder of Madison Technologies, Praburaajan Selvarajan comes on the show to explain how it works. 

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What do you do when a homegrown Ice Creamery can no longer operate as they should? How do you keep a good relationship with your suppliers and your customers? What pivots are available to you? How do you ensure your ice cream business doesn’t go into a meltdown? We find out by catching up with Edmund Tan, Co-founder of Inside Scoop.

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How is the retail cosmetics and grooming products industry faring during the MCO? Like everyone else, not great. One such player, Hair Depot has 20 retail outlets mostly in shopping malls, all of which have to remain closed during the Movement Control Order. With business taking significant damage over the last few weeks, Jeff Yong, Group CEO of Hair Depot shares how he has now resorted to online consultation and has created new roles for his employees.

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