Open For Business
Kanalaren Xehetasunak
Open For Business
The flagship entrepreneurship show on BFM, featuring personal business stories from early stage start-ups, all the way to billionaire octogenarians in Malaysia and abroad. Notable guests include Martin Cooper (father of the mobile phone), Julian Assange (founder of WikiLeaks), Ralph Henry Baer (fath...
Atal Berriak
2050 atal
Bolttech: Building a US$2.1B Insurtech Platform
Unicorn insurtech Bolttech has raised over US$600 million to build its global B2B2C insurance distribution platform, which now processes US$85 billion...
Taking the Long Steep Approach to Business
Founded twelve years ago, Rhymba Hills has steadily grown into a highly decorated, internationally recognised premium botanical infusion brand. The fu...
An Honest Conversation About Running a Grub Business With Ahong
Grub by Ahong & Friends is a wildly popular, no-frills steakhouse tucked away in a shophouse behind Happy Mansion in Section 17, Petaling Jaya. Operat...
Squaring Up to Southeast Asia's Data Problem
If you sell products in a physical supermarket, decades of established tracking by companies like Nielsen ensure you know exactly how much product mov...
Adding Life to Years: The Pharmacist Rebuilding How We Age
Malaysia is ageing faster than almost any other country in Asia, yet the infrastructure to support this demographic shift barely exists. Addressing th...
Building a Seven-Figure Hotel Marketing Agency
Hotels face a persistent shortage of marketing talent who truly understand their operations, while generalist agencies often fail to grasp the precise...
(A)Head in the Cloud Space
Cloud Space is a Malaysian cloud and artificial intelligence transformation company that delivers cloud migration, AI deployment, cybersecurity, and m...
Wahine Capital Is Closing. Rejina Rahim Tells Us Why.
Wahine Capital was built around a persistent problem within the financial ecosystem. Women in Malaysia outlive men and are disproportionately exposed...
Building the IKEA of Cyber Security for SMEs
According to a 2025 report, ransomware is present in 88 percent of all data breaches affecting small-to-medium enterprises, making them the primary ta...
How a Malaysian Chocolate Brand Won the World
When you eat a croissant from a Malaysian bakery chain or a mousse cake from a hotel buffet, there is a strong chance the chocolate coating was made i...
Appreneurs, AI Hype & SMEs: 1337’s 20-Year Arc
What started in 2005 as a developer training center called iTrain has evolved into 1337 Ventures, one of Malaysia's key players in the startup busines...
When Doing Good Has to Pay for Itself: MADCash’s Next Chapter
When Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin last appeared on the show in March 2024, MADCash was focused on building an alternative credit score for women marginali...
Inside AOne’s RM20M Valuation
What began as a tool to help kindergartens, tuition centers, and music academies digitise their paperwork has evolved into an operating platform for 3...
Sweet Legacy: How Malaysia's Iconic Rose Syrup Brand Stayed on Our Tables for 40 years
If you have ever made a glass of rose syrup at home in Malaysia, there is a strong chance the bottle featured a slanting yellow label with a rose flow...
From UKM Research to RM16M Revenue? Nomatech’s Pitch
What began as decades of plant genetics and biotechnology research at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has evolved into Nomatech, an agricultural...
Can Metronomik Become Malaysia’s Square Enix?
Can a Malaysian indie game studio go head-to-head with the world’s biggest gaming companies? Metronomik founder Wan Hazmer believes Malaysia has the t...
They Raised the Dead to Build Malaysia's Biggest Animation IP
In 2018, Hendra Wardi won the MDEC IP Creators Challenge with a highly original concept: a comedy about two teenage skeletons working in a zombie groc...
Ditching E-Commerce? Pre-IPO CompAsia’s 85-Store Bet
What began in 2012 as an enterprise PC broker has evolved into one of Southeast Asia’s largest re-commerce operators, processing over half a million p...
LOL Asia’s 17 Years: From Comedy Promoter to IP Owner
What began with a single stand-up comedy show at Zouk KL’s Velvet Underground in 2009 has expanded into a regional live entertainment force, selling o...
Fixing Phones Is Dead? Secondlifeasia’s Software Pivot
For years, Secondlifeasia was recognized as a hardware-heavy device repair business. But as the company sets out to raise RM5 million at a near-RM38 m...
Infinium Robotics: F&B Failure to RM96M Exit
Following a RM96 million acquisition by German-listed DDB, Jon Woon, Founder and CEO of Infinium Robotics, unpacks what’s next for the indoor autonomo...
The Creator Collaboration Advantage
Open your brand's Instagram and honestly ask if you would follow the account if you did not work there. Most corporate social media pages function lik...
Malaysia's Natural Treasures, Waiting to Be Discovered
In 2008, Alann Tan returned from New Zealand with his degree but no business plan, driven home by his father's cancer diagnosis. To survive, he and hi...
30 Hotels in 3 Years with No Hospitality Background
Traditional hotels often force guests to pay for luxury features they simply do not use. Recognising this gap, Benny Ong and his co-founders launched...
Replacing SWIFT With Stablecoins for Cross Border Payments
Traditional cross-border payments are plagued by a severe lack of predictability. Relying on an outdated correspondent banking network and the SWIFT s...
Same Founder, Different City, Completely Different Business.
In April 2019, Muhammad Hamizan Zaidi opened Affogato, a popular coffee and ice cream dessert cafe in Kuching. Capitalising on a loyal community follo...
Why Indelible Ventures Bets on B2B, Not Consumer Tech
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 al...
Hand-Stamped and Hard-Earned
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-...
The Malaysian Who Moved to India to Make Pandan the Next Matcha
Matcha took a decade to go from Japanese tea ceremony to global café staple. Shivaani Suppiah believes pandan, that fragrant green leaf that flavours...
The Sustainability Metric You Can Actually Taste
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 proj...
Why Networking Is Broken, and What Happens When You Fix the Room
Most professional networking events fail because they focus on collecting business cards rather than building genuine connections. Jude Ashvin realise...
Why A ‘Big Health’ Entrepreneur Built A Nasi Lemak Brand
Hagen Chen originally built a fully bootstrapped, seven-figure F&B group starting with Toast Maker, a healthy sandwich and coffee concept for busy pro...
The Cafe That Grew By Shrinking
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...
Acquiring Your Way to the Top: GenCap's Blueprint for SME Succession
Across Malaysia and Southeast Asia, thousands of profitable businesses are quietly approaching a major crisis. Their founders are entering their sixti...
MicFront's Formula for Turning Fear Into Confidence
MicFront is not a traditional public speaking class; it is a psychology-first education model. Co-founded in 2017 by Mas Mahathir and licensed counsel...
He Bet Everything On The Experience Economy. He Was Right.
KC Purusotman began his career at just 15 years old by throwing parties. Twenty-five years later, he operates one of Malaysia's most diverse and dynam...
The App Equipping the Frontline Workers Behind Every Great Experience
Frontline staff in hospitality and facility management are often treated as the forgotten workforce. Many lack corporate email addresses and are force...
Turning an RM29M Heritage Site Into a Michelin Key Hotel
In 2016, a faded 1930s Art Deco building in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown sold for RM29 million. Once the tallest building in the city, its architectural h...
Mapping Hidden Corporate Connections Across Asia
Every business deal relies on knowing exactly who you are dealing with, but mapping corporate relationships across Asia is an incredibly challenging t...
SMEs Need a Sales Director, Not Sales Training
Small business owners often look at a declining pipeline and assume they have a sales problem, but what they usually have is a leadership deficit. Lac...