Open For Business

The commercial space industry is moving away from exclusive government monopolies to an era where securing a rideshare slot on a commercial rocket is now accessible to private citizens. Ken Chan is proving exactly how accessible this new frontier is by building KENSAT, a 2U CubeSat, entirely from his home. Outfitted with an NVIDIA Jetson running a compressed language model for in-orbit computing, the satellite will soon launch on a SpaceX rideshare, marking the first time a Malaysian private individual has put a satellite into orbit.

While launch costs have significantly decreased, Ken quickly discovered that internal satellite components remain heavily priced for institutional buyers and suffer from months-long lead times. With zero prior hardware experience, he designed his own power and radio boards to bypass these bottlenecks. After successfully passing the rigorous vibration testing required for launch, these homemade components became the foundation of Swordholder Technologies, a solo venture built to disrupt the inaccessible satellite parts market.

Ken joins us to discuss the realities of building and launching a satellite on a bootstrapped budget. We explore his pivot from co-founding a massive crypto derivatives exchange to starting a zero-revenue aerospace hardware business, and unpack the real economics of commercial space rideshares, the process of qualifying homemade hardware for orbit, and how Swordholder Technologies plans to bring affordable infrastructure to the booming space economy.

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In 2012, three doctors opened a family clinic in Pasir Gudang with a simple but radical proposition: to provide good quality healthcare at prices ordinary working families could afford. Fourteen years later, that single clinic has rebranded as Mediwira and expanded into a formidable network of 22 outlets, comprising thirteen dental clinics, seven medical clinics, and two doctor-led medispas. It generates over RM20 million in annual revenue, and now the fully bootstrapped group has set a target to reach 100 outlets across Malaysia by 2030.

What makes Mediwira unusual is its ownership structure. Rather than relying on salaried employees, every single clinic is run by a doctor or dentist holding real equity as a partner. To reach their 100-clinic goal, the group must find nearly 80 more clinician-partners willing to buy-in amidst a national doctor shortage, all while standardising operations across dozens of outlets without destroying the unique local ownership that makes them successful.

Dr Mok joins us to unpack where the profit margins actually sit across their different business lines, why their dental arm now outnumbers medical almost two to one, and the immense capital and leadership required to hit their 2030 target.

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In 2023, after nine years studying and working in New York, Michael Ang came home to join his family's hospitality business. Today PHASE2 runs full-service restaurants, casual dining, café concepts, a central kitchen, food production, consumer packaged goods, and beverage development under one roof, anchored by fifteen authentic Taiwanese-style outlets across the Klang Valley generating around RM30 million in annual revenue, entirely self-funded.

MJ will tell you the food is almost the easy part. What's hard is everything underneath it: the operational discipline, supply chains, culture, and technology that determine whether a restaurant group can scale. He joins us to unpack why menus can be copied but operating excellence can't, and what a Southeast Asian expansion and eventual IPO ambitions could look like over the next five years.

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It is one of the most common paradoxes in business: an entrepreneur builds a company from scratch, grows it to multi-million-dollar revenues, and ends up trapped inside the day-to-day machine they created. They work through grueling hours, put out operational fires, and realise that scaling up has also scaled their stress.

Chan Boon Yong and Low Huoi Seong, co-founders of The Better Business School, join BFM’s Open For Business to discuss how their executive education platform helps operators transition into strategic leaders running profitable, purposeful assets.

They break down their core curriculum, combining a "Courageous Leadership" mindset shift with the four pillars of the Scaling Up framework (People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash), to explain how neuroplasticity, Asian-centric case studies, and peer forum support prevent founders from defaulting back to old habits once training ends.

Download The Better Business School 2025 Insights report for full key takeaways, and apply for their upcoming executive cohort running from October 12 to 16 on their website at thebetterbusinessschool.org.

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If you've ever tossed out a bottle of used cooking oil without a second thought, you've handed away a rapidly appreciating commodity. The aviation industry is racing to decarbonise, and the feedstock for that shift is sitting in home kitchens and restaurant fryers across the region.

Vinesh Sinha has spent sixteen years building the infrastructure to capture it. Founded in 2010, FatHopes Energy is now Malaysia's leading used cooking oil collector and distributor with its own digital traceability system. But the biggest change this year is an estimated US$500 million Sustainable Aviation Fuel refinery in Port Klang.

Vinesh joins us to unpack where the refinery stands after an independent feasibility study, the challenges and opportunities ahead, and how volatile fuel prices are shaping the economics of clean fuel at scale.

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Unicorn insurtech Bolttech has raised over US$600 million to build its global B2B2C insurance distribution platform, which now processes US$85 billion in quoted annual premiums and operates across 39 markets.

Rob Schimek, Co-Founder and Group CEO of Bolttech, joins BFM’s Open For Business to discuss his transition from corporate leadership at AIG to pioneering embedded protection technology.

He explains how Bolttech's orchestration layer enables telecom partners, retailers, and device makers to offer tailored protection products, details the capital-intensive infrastructure required to scale across four continents, and outlines the company's financial transition toward sustained EBITDA profitability and self-funded growth.

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Founded twelve years ago, Rhymba Hills has steadily grown into a highly decorated, internationally recognised premium botanical infusion brand. The fully bootstrapped business has secured the prestigious Great Taste Award in the UK and a gourmet award in Paris, while successfully exporting to highly competitive markets including London, Japan, and Dubai. The company has also been appointed as a Strategic Partner for Visit Malaysia Year 2026 and currently supplies premium raw materials to one of the largest tea companies in the country.

Despite the string of global achievements, the operational reality of the business tells a story of immense entrepreneurial endurance. Rhymba Hills is profitable and successfully holds premium retail shelf space, yet after more than a decade of grinding through gruelling two-year sales cycles and overcoming constant rejection, the business still generates under a million ringgit in annual revenue. Founder Ciinndey Wong has navigated the long-steeped growth entirely on her own terms, fighting through self-doubt and the constant pressure of making payroll to keep her vision alive.

Ciinndey joins us for an unusually candid conversation about the harsh realities of slow business growth and what it genuinely costs to survive a twelve-year entrepreneurial journey. We explore the mental fortitude required to keep going when the financial scale does not immediately match the global accolades, as well as the challenges of acquiring customers in a highly traditional beverage market. We also unpack her upcoming export push into Europe and Hong Kong and discuss what the ultimate endgame looks like for a founder who refuses to quit.

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Grub by Ahong & Friends is a wildly popular, no-frills steakhouse tucked away in a shophouse behind Happy Mansion in Section 17, Petaling Jaya. Operating with a partially self-service model, and limited seating that strictly demands advance booking, the restaurant serves up premium cuts ranging from New Zealand striploin and Wagyu to Beef Wellington. The core menu is intentionally limited, supplemented by a rotating set of specials driven entirely by what Ahong feels inspired to cook.

Funded by family and friends, the business generates six-figure revenue and has achieved early-stage profitability. However, the operational reality of running an independent restaurant is intensely demanding. Founder Ahong controls almost every single detail of the business himself, to the point where simply keeping the doors open is considered his biggest milestone of the past year. 

The fiercely outspoken Ahong talks to us about the industry's toughest issues, offering sharp critiques on the hidden costs of underpriced food, the damage influencers can inflict on genuine hospitality, and the urgent need to build sustainable career paths for culinary professionals.

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If you sell products in a physical supermarket, decades of established tracking by companies like Nielsen ensure you know exactly how much product moved, your market share, and what your competitors charged. But in the Southeast Asian e-commerce sector, a market that generated US$157 billion in gross merchandise value last year, that clarity completely vanishes. With product listings constantly changing, sellers bundling items into single SKUs, and categories named differently across six countries and six languages, the online market lacks a single source of truth.

After spending a decade navigating this, Simon Torring partnered with former McKinsey advisor Sarabjit Singh to build a solution. Founded in 2022, their data company Cube successfully estimates online sales down to the individual SKU level. Today, the platform serves over 20 enterprise clients, including L'Oréal and IKEA, and has grown to a team of more than 70 staff. Following a US$3.7 million Series A funding round in April 2026 led by Betatron Venture Group, the company is now preparing to push its analytics into North Asia and Latin America.

Simon joins us to discuss the harsh realities of building a data business in a highly fragmented market that actively resists being measured. We explore the economics of running an enterprise subscription model, the early failures while finding product-market fit, the integration of AI, and their ultimate endgame as a global data company.

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Malaysia is ageing faster than almost any other country in Asia, yet the infrastructure to support this demographic shift barely exists. Addressing this massive gap is Seniora, a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure integrated elder care operation. 

Spanning across centres in Taiping, Penang, and Johor Bahru, the business offers a comprehensive suite of services including elder day care, home nursing, physiotherapy, and active ageing programmes. Crucially, every member of their care team is certified in Montessori dementia care, ensuring a highly specialised approach to cognitive wellness.

Having recently opened two new centres, secured a Malaysian distributorship for cutting-edge cognitive wellness technology, and launched a Senior Learning Community, the business is scaling aggressively. 

Founder Chew Siew Mei joins us to discuss the realities of building an elder care operation in a market that does not yet fully believe it needs one. We unpack the complexities of running day care centres, the uphill battle to change how local families think about ageing, and what it genuinely takes to scale trust in such a sensitive industry.

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