Top 10 Malaysians Dominating The World Wide Web
Celebrating Malaysians and their achievements this Merdeka month, SAYS looks at Malaysians who have changed and reinvented the technological landscape in the country and beyond.
By Darian Goh — 07 Aug 2014, 05:47 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
1. Mark Chang, the founder of Jobstreet.com. Jobstreet is the largest online job employment portal in South East Asia.
Mark Chang Mun Kee founded MOL AccessPortal and JobStreet.com. He is the Chief Executive Officer of JobStreet.com, a position he has retained since the company was formed. He also serves on the boards of Vitrox Technologies, Innity Corporation Berhad and 104 Corporation, Taiwan.
JobStreet.com is a job portal founded in 1997. Founded in Malaysia, it is now Southeast Asia's largest online employment company, according to Forbes. It currently serves about 80000 corporate customers and 11 million jobseekers. Even as early as in July 2010, the Group services over 60,000 corporate customers and over 7 million jobseekers.
2. Khailee Ng, venture partner for 500 Startups and co-founder of SAYS.com, Malaysia's fastest growing news site and Groupsmore. Groupsmore was the largest online deals site before being acquired by Groupon Malaysia.
Khailee Ng is now a startup investor, investing in startups across Southeast Asia.
Image via says.comTech startup investor and founder. Venture Partner, 500 Startups. Co-founder of GroupsMore (acquired by Groupon) and SAYS.com (acquired by Catcha Group). Chairman of REV Asia. Looking forward to helping create the next generation of Southeast Asia’s startup success stories!
khailee.comAlong with the new fund for Southeast Asia, 500 Startups has hired Ng as venture partner to oversee investments in the region. Ng co-founded group-buying site GroupsMore.com, which he grew into the largest company in its segment in Malaysia, before selling to Groupon. He also co-founded Southeast Asian social news company SAYS.com, which recently merged with Catcha Media Berhad.
techcrunch.com
3. Anthony Tan, co-founder of MyTeksi. MyTeksi is now downloaded and used by 1.2 million users in over 15 different cities.
MyTeksi is co-founded by Anthony Tan and the app has revolutionised how Malaysians use taxis.
Image via malaysia.myMyTeksi is a Malaysian startup that aims to revitalize the taxi industry. We want to improve the safety and efficiency of our town taxis by leveraging on advancements in GPS and mobile technology. As a social enterprise, and we believe that business and social value can be achieved in parallel.
grabtaxi.comThe MyTeksi app has been downloaded onto more than 1.2 million mobile devices in over 15 cities in the region.
malaysianwireless.com
Just like many startups, MyTeksi started with just an idea. Two Malaysian students, Hooi Ling Tan and Anthony Tan who were pursuing their MBAs at Harvard Business School entered a business plan competition to get some form of validation from their professor about what was to be MyTeksi. Co-founder Hooi Ling Tan has since left MyTeksi to join McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm while Anthony Tan now leads the MyTeksi regional office.
4. Vivy Sofinas and Fadzarudin Anuar, founders of Fashion Valet. Fashion Valet is now one of the leading online retailers housing 200 over brands.
Fashion Valet was on a reality show and got funding from local investors.
Image via malaysianreview.comLaunched in 2010, Fashion Valet is a online fashion e-commerce site founded by Fadzarudin Anuar and Vivy Yusof, who have taken on the CEO and COO roles, respectively. With FV, their mission is to elevate the local fashion scene, and this is apparent by bridging FV’s online customers with local products and brands listed on the website.
e27.coThe husband and wife tag team was initially inspired by the online shopping culture when they were in London (in particular, ASOS) that when they returned to KL, the idea didn’t really leave them. In 2010, they decided to give it a shot with an initial capital of RM100,000, a three-man team (there was a third partner involved) and only 10 labels; FashionValet was born. Today, the store has grown into a strong team of 20 and handles over 200 brands!
femalemag.com.my
5. Timothy Tiah, co-founder of Nuffnang.com. Nuffnang is the leading blogging community in the world.
Timothy Tiah is the co-founder of Nuffnang, the world's largest blog advertising community.
Image via kosmo.com.myNuffnang is the World’s Leading Blog Advertising Community. We are dedicated to building strong relationships between the bloggers in our community and brands seeking relevant publishers with strong followings to engage with.
Nuffnang continues to grow rapidly. By 2010, in an interview with Singapore’s Straits Times, Ming revealed that Nuffnang was generating $10 million in annual revenue. Today, under Nuffnang, Ming and Timothy are also running ChurpChurp (a social influencer network), Jipaban (an e-commerce site), Ripplewerkz (a web design studio), and more recently NuffnangX (a mobile blog reader).
techinasia.com
6. Richard Tan, co-founder of Lelong.my. The website is the eBay of Malaysia and is the biggest online auction portal in Malaysia.
Richard Tan is the co-founder of Interbase Resources Sdn Bhd, one of the oldest e-commerce stores in Malaysia back in 1998.It operates the online auction portal www.lelong.my and www.SuperBuy.my, an online premium fixed price e-commerce mall.
Started during the dotcom boom, he had to struggle through the global dotcom bust in 2000 but he persevered and today his site is the No.1 online auction site in Malaysia. It must be more than luck. He is one of the very few Malaysian entrepreneurs to manage an Internet based business in a leadership position in the region. The site is LELONG.COM the brainchild of Richard Tan.
nextupasia.com
7. Chan Kee Siak, founder of Exabytes Network. The company is the leading web hosting provider in Malaysia and services clients over 120 countries.
Born to a hawker family, the self-taught entrepreneur, Mr. Chan Kee Siak worked as a child helper at his parents’ hawker store and founded Exabytes at the tender age of 19 after dropping out of college to concentrate on his 100% website business.
exabytes.com.my
Today, Exabytes Network is the largest web-hosting company in Malaysia with its own servers and 34,000 clients in over 120 countries. One of the interesting strategies Chan initiated was to ensure that all sales were done over the Internet. Under Chan’s leadership and vision, Exabytes became an MSC Status company and was awarded the Best Reseller Performance 2011 By MYNIC (The Malaysia Network Information Centre) and The 2011 Golden Bull Award.
8. Ai Ching Goh, co-founder of Piktochart. Piktochart is an award-winning online infographic editor used by over 10,000 businesses worldwide and recommended by Forbes Magazine.
Goh Ai Ching is the co-founder of Piktochart, an online infographic editor.
Image via themalaymailonline.comPiktochart is a web app that helps non-designers create beautiful infographics. We’re envisioning that text-based blogs would slowly morph into number-based infographics someday, and our vision is to present information in the most beautiful way possible.
techinasia.com
While in the working sphere Ai Ching noticed a demand for infographics among the digital world. Andrea and Ai Ching looked high and low for a tool that would aid in the creation in infographics fortunately not to find any. Leading to the creation of PIKTOCHART! “Piktochart is among the first online web applications to autonomize the creation of infographics. Its vision is to allow the user the flexibility and control over what information will be viewed online. In short an interactive experience when one views digital content. My vision is to one day replace blogging with infographics,” explains Ai Ching.
Other than TaxiMonger, Malaysia based Piktochart also won the Best of Start-up Companies category at the same APICTA Awards. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Piktochart, it is a web application for creating beautiful infographics. PiktoChart was also the Echelon 2012 Vietnam Satellite winner, walking away with the Judges’ Choice Award.
e27.co9. Ganesh Kumar Bangah, founder of MOL Access Portal. It is one of the biggest online payment portals and also owns Friendster, a popular gaming website in Southeast Asia.
With a dream to become the Bill Gates of Malaysia when he was a cybercafé operator in his teenage years back in Johore, and despite being laughed at by his former employer and peers, he decided to prove himself by starting his entrepreneurship venture by building MOL from scratch back in February 2000 to become one of the biggest online payment service providers in Asia with an annual revenue of RM320Million.
nextupasia.com
Today MOL is one of the biggest online payment service providers in Asia with annual revenue of RM460mn while handling over 600,000 physical payment channels across 75 countries worldwide. In 2009 he acquired Friendster Inc. a pioneer social network. Ganesh was also a top nominee for the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year - Malaysia 2004, 2007 and Pua Khein Seng 2012 Awards.
10. Vishen Lakhiani, founder of Mindvalley. Mindvalley was voted as one of the world's most democratic workplaces for seven years in a row.
Vishen Lakhiani, a Malaysian entrepreneur whose business hacks workplace culture
Image via yfsmagazine.comThrough Mindvalley, I invest and build education companies. Our goal is to help spread enlightened ideas to 1 billion people by 2050, ideas that you won’t get from traditional education systems. Collectively, we’ve been growing like crazy and now employ brilliant minds from 30+ different countries, all of whom work in our playpen for adults aka Mindvalley HQ, billed by Inc Magazine readers as one of the World’s Coolest Offices in 2012.
vishenlakhiani.com
Mindvalley is a global brand and company that invests in, creates and builds businesses that align with its goal to push humanity forward. Founded by Vishen Lakhiani, Mindvalley grew from its roots as a digital publishing company, to build a series of successful businesses in a wide variety of sectors ranging from mobile apps, marketing, technology, personal growth and entrepreneurship, to health and wellness. It’s been a fun, crazy ride so far.
mindvalley.com