Open For Business

In April 2019, Muhammad Hamizan Zaidi opened Affogato, a popular coffee and ice cream dessert cafe in Kuching. Capitalising on a loyal community following, the concept soon expanded into a second lot right next door to become Oregano by Affogato, a pasta-forward restaurant blending Sarawakian ingredients with Italian fusion. Together, these ventures built the foundation of a seven-figure multi-brand F&B business.

Encouraged by his success in Sarawak, Mizan made the bold decision to expand into Petaling Jaya. However, the operational realities of West Malaysia proved vastly different from his home base. Facing the stark contrasts and intense pressures of running an F&B outlet in Kuala Lumpur compared to Kuching, the Petaling Jaya expansion struggled. To rescue the business, Mizan successfully secured capital from new investors, executing a major strategic pivot that saw the PJ location completely rebrand from Oregano into Warung Jakarta.

Mizan joins us to discuss the realities of expanding an independent F&B brand across the South China Sea. We explore the distinct differences in consumer behaviour and operational demands between the Kuching and KL markets. He also shares the heavy emotional responsibility of managing a team through a business rescue, and why his ultimate goal for his portfolio is building deep, sustainable artisan character rather than chasing aggressive scale.

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While the rest of Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem was chasing consumer-driven "unicorn" narratives and burning cash on a race for user growth at all costs, Indelible Ventures took a completely different path. Since its launch, this early-stage venture capital firm has avoided consumer hype to bet heavily on B2B enterprise software.

Managing Partner Kevin Brockland joins us to explain why he avoids consumer tech and how the B2B landscape is reaching a critical turning point. He also discusses why a growing number of Malaysian founders are choosing to completely bootstrap using AI tools rather than seek dilutive venture funding, why the fundraising environment for VCs is the worst it’s been in a decade, and how early-stage capital is migrating away from overrated markets toward overlooked regions like the Philippines and Japan.

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Most fashion businesses begin with a gap in the market. Kayla Batik Design began with a mother who couldn't find colourful batik clothing for her one-year-old daughter. So she decided to make it herself.

What started as designing a single dress for her toddler, has become a fully bootstrapped, profitable modern batik brand stocked in boutiques and department stores across Malaysia and as far as George Town, Penang.

Kayla Batik Design makes contemporary batik clothing and lifestyle accessories for all ages: from baby bibs and kimonos to adult shirts and dresses, scarves, bags, and coasters. All designed by founder Jaime Sya, made by local tailors, using hand-stamped cotton batik. 

Jaime joins us to talk about what it takes to build a design-led brand when you're learning as you go — the inventory gambles, the quality control nightmares, and why she believes consistency and customer listening are the only strategy that actually works.

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Matcha took a decade to go from Japanese tea ceremony to global café staple. Shivaani Suppiah believes pandan, that fragrant green leaf that flavours everything from kaya to nasi lemak across Southeast Asia, is ready for the same journey. Her target market: India. Her base: Pondicherry, a former French colony on the southeastern coast, chosen specifically for its mix of locals, international travellers, and food-curious entrepreneurs. 

It's Pandan Only launched in mid-2025 and has already sold out every batch it has produced, with 60 to 76 percent product margins. The flagship product is a fully vegan Pandan Coconut Spread or kaya, currently supplied by Malaysian bakery VickedGood while Shivaani sets up her own commercial kitchen in Pondicherry. She walks into cafés with samples. She runs tasting events. And she is raising her first seed round of approximately RM42,000 to buy a 125-litre commercial machine and scale production to meet the waitlist already forming.

Shivaani joins us to talk about what it actually takes to introduce a completely unknown flavour to a new country from scratch — the on-the-ground hustle, the margins behind a premium artisan product, and the bigger argument that Malaysia has ingredients the world has not yet discovered.

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When Mathew Howe was last on Open For Business in July 2024, Grobrix had just announced its partnership with Green City Growers in Boston and was projecting 500% quarterly revenue growth from its Farming-as-a-Service subscription model. The question then was whether a banker-turned-urban-farmer with a patented Lego-inspired green wall system could build a serious commercial business across Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and North America.

Two years on, the answer is coming into focus.

Grobrix now manages over 70 commercial farming locations across Singapore, KL, and Boston. Clients include CBRE, LinkedIn, and W Hotels. Annual recurring revenue has crossed $1 million. And the company is rolling out Grobrix 2.0: an IoT and cloud-connected version of the wall that allows remote monitoring and control of each farm from anywhere in the world.

But the story Mathew most wants to tell is not about technology. It is about what happens when a corporate office grows its own food, and why he believes urban farming is the most underrated tool in the corporate wellness playbook.

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Most professional networking events fail because they focus on collecting business cards rather than building genuine connections. Jude Ashvin realised this after experiencing a highly curated after-work social event in Belgium. Drawing on his background managing the business and logistics for the Malaysian live band Rhythm Nation, he decided to bring this refined approach home to Kuala Lumpur to tackle the growing epidemic of professional loneliness.

Launched in January 2025, Just After Work is a networking platform designed specifically for the evening post-work window. Instead of sterile hotel ballrooms, the platform hosts vetted attendees at carefully selected venues to ensure high-quality interactions. 

Jude talks to us about how Just After Work successfully vets and matches attendees to create a high-trust environment, the rollout of recurring concepts like Padel & Connect and The Women's Circle, and their upcoming regional expansion into Jakarta and Singapore ahead of a major networking festival in 2027.

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Hagen Chen originally built a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure F&B group starting with Toast Maker, a healthy sandwich and coffee concept for busy professionals. However, his latest venture marks a significant pivot. Stepping away from health-focused cafe fare, Hagen recently launched Jiran-jiran, a brand new community-centric concept dedicated to serving traditional Malaysian nasi lemak.

What makes Jiran-jiran particularly unique is how it was created. Hagen set himself an intense operational challenge to conceptualise, build, and launch the entire brand from scratch in exactly 60 days. This rapid execution ties directly into his core business thesis. He argues that a food brand's true competition is not the similar shop down the street, but the entire timeframe of a person's hunger. If a business fails to satisfy a hidden need within that specific window, they lose the customer completely.

Hagen joins us to discuss the intense reality of successfully launching a restaurant concept in under two months, the operational mechanics of running a central kitchen to support a multi-brand group, and what healthy food brands often get wrong about the local market.

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Most cafes do not survive ten years, and those that do typically rely on relentless expansion to stay afloat. Naj & Belle reached this rare milestone by doing the exact opposite. Founded in 2015 by Annabelle Liau and Datuk Najib Hamid of The Serai Group, the premium dessert and dining cafe launched in Subang with a foundation built on a deep family passion for hospitality. Famous for introducing Malaysia's first Watermelon Cake, the brand quickly expanded to a second outlet in Bangsar and began aggressively pushing toward a third, fourth, and eventually fifth location.

That is when Bryan Chen, armed with a culinary background and years of watching the founders build the brand, made a critical intervention. Recognising the operational strain of rapid scaling, he made the difficult call to halt expansion, close underperforming locations, and completely overhaul their internal systems. By choosing to scale back and tighten their backend operations, the team prioritised business health over top-line growth. Today, Naj & Belle stands as a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure, family-run enterprise operating two highly sustainable outlets.

Second-generation operators and Directors Bryan and Leora Chen talk to us about what it actually costs to manage premium food margins and labour, why they deliberately walked away from a multi-outlet expansion strategy, and their strategic plans for the next decade, which include a growing events arm, halal certification, and the dream of opening in Penang.

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Across Malaysia and Southeast Asia, thousands of profitable businesses are quietly approaching a major crisis. Their founders are entering their sixties and seventies, and the next generation either does not want to take over or is simply not ready to lead. This succession gap leaves many highly successful enterprises in a vulnerable position, threatening businesses that took decades of hard work to build.

GenCap Partners was established to step directly into this void. Founded in August 2024, the Singapore and Malaysia-based acquisition firm targets the lower mid-market, focusing on businesses generating RM10 million to RM50 million in revenue. By raising capital and partnering with experienced operators, GenCap has already acquired a medical software provider, an accounting firm, and a premium preschool in under two years.

Co-founders Zachary Lee and Zad Ngor explain why acquiring an established, profitable company is often a much smarter entrepreneurial path than building a tech startup from scratch. They explore the operational realities behind their three recent acquisitions, their ambition to build the region's first serial acquirer of SMEs, and what retiring Malaysian founders must know to confidently sell their life's work.

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MicFront is not a traditional public speaking class; it is a psychology-first education model. Co-founded in 2017 by Mas Mahathir and licensed counsellor Dr Jolynn Ch'ng, the academy operates on the thesis that speaking anxiety is a psychological barrier rather than a mechanical flaw. This distinct curriculum differentiator has proven highly successful commercially, allowing the company to scale rapidly into a multi-vertical education business.

Mahathir and Dr. Jolynn talk to us about how they successfully transitioned the business away from relying solely on founder-driven marketing to build a sustainable network, the specific criteria they look for when selecting franchisees, and the commercial strategy behind their upcoming attempt at the Malaysian Book of Records with a massive 1000-student speaking event.

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