Profile of Successful Entrepreneurs in ICT Area in Malaysia - Part 2

CHRISTOPHER CHAN HOOI GUAN – Founder and CEO of TMS Asia

CHRISTOPHER CHAN HOOI GUAN, a Malaysian, aged 46, is the Chief Executive Officer of the Group and is a Director of the Company since 9 April 1996. He is also a member of Remuneration Committee of the Company. He graduated from the University of Central Arkansas, USA, with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1993. He is the co-founder of TMS. He has more than 18 years experience in the IT industry. He is involved in the overall management of the TMS Group and developing the strategic direction of the Group.

He started his career as a Graduate Assistant at the School of Business, University of Central Arkansas in Arkansas, USA in 1993. In 1995 he took up the post of a Consultant at Acxiom Corporation, a data mining company, in USA, where he was involved in exploring business opportunities in Asia and in the Pacific realm upon coming to Malaysia in 1996, he founded TMS.

In 2001, he won the PIKOM-Computimes ICT Award for ICT Entrepreneur of the Year. He was also the finalist at the 2004 Ernst and Young ICT Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Between March 2003 to February 2005, Chris was also the President of the Technopreneurs’ Association of Malaysia. He is also a council member of PIKOM. Christopher Chan does not hold any directorship in other public companies.

TMS Enterprise Knowledge Portal enables organiations to create, exchange and manage information across a single business-centric workplace, generating knowledge connectivity within enterprises through a user-friendly desktop environment. Example it combines Dynamic Content Management System, Knowledge Assets, Sales Force Automation System etc together.

It is not just for publishing content but also for knowledge management and fostering collaboration. In terms of its business model, the company will be complementing the service model with a licensing approach. So instead of being a portal builder, it will work with resellers, system integrators and other portal builders in Malaysia and abroad. Mr Chris Chan mentioned that software development requires time and money for research and development, but once it’s created, there’s unlimited potential in the licensing revenue. Hence he believes the licensing portion is the most scalable portion of the business.

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Mathavan Chandran -CEO of InfoValley

His idea of “Chinaman” doing business is quite unique. His approach to keeping operations going was simple : Don’t spend money. The best part of building a business is when you have no money. When you are not spending any money, any revenue you make quickly becomes profit. His company deal in bioinformatics. Biotech is basically a tech-based approach to living organisms. To do biotech you need informatics tools.  Biologists generate a lot of data, in bits and pieces, and in multiple formats from different types of equipment. We put it in a common format for them and output it in such a way that they are able to see the combined effects of all that information. I guess this speciality may have something to do with his background as it was mentioned that he always loved science (especially chemistry) during his schooldays. He graduated with a degree in biochemistry and chemistry.

Interestingly, he does not agree with conventional approach to knowledge management that is portal based. This contradicts with Mr Chris Chan, one of the technopreners whose business is in licensing of usage of knowledge management portal. Mr Chandra feels that data can be stored, crunched and presented but knowledge can never be captured in that way.

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Ganesh Kumar Bangah – CEO of MOL AccessPortal

Ganesh Kumar Bangah is the Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of MOL Global Pte. Ltd. In this capacity he leads the two wholly owned subsidiaries of MOL Global, namely MOL AccessPortal Berhad (“MOL”), a global online payment service provider and Friendster Inc. (“Friendster”), the world’s pioneer social network. He co-founded and built MOL from scratch to become one of the biggest online payment service providers in Asia with annual revenues of over USD200Million. MOL today has over 680,000 physical payment channels across 80 countries worldwide and handles over 5,000,000 transactions a month.

In December 2009, Ganesh led MOL Global in the acquisition of 100 per cent of Friendster Inc., a leading global online social network with more than 115 million registered members worldwide. MOL Global today is one of Southeast Asia’s biggest internet companies both in terms of revenue and member base combining the huge member base of Friendster with the content and monetization capability of MOL.

Ganesh was certified by the Malaysia Book of Records as the Youngest Chief Executive Officer of a Public Listed Company in Malaysia when he listed MOL AccessPortal Berhad on the MESDAQ Market of Bursa Malaysia at the age of 23. In 2012, he was the Malaysian Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year and was the Top Winner for the Prestige Top 40 Under 40 2012 Awards. His other awards include the JCI 2009 Creative Young Entrepreneur Award, Technopreneur Excellence Award at the PIKOM ICT Leadership Awards 2009 and the Young Indian Entrepreneur Award 2009. In 2013, Malaysia Tatler listed him in the A-List of Who’s Who in Malaysia and Top 10 of Malaysia listed him among the 10 most inspiring Malaysian technology entrepreneurs. Recognized as a regional business and technology thought leader, Ganesh was also acknowledged by Society Magazine 2004 as one of the 100 people you must know in Asia.

Ganesh is active in IT industry development and is currently the Treasurer of the National IT Association of Malaysia (“PIKOM”). Ganesh is also a member of the IT Industry Advisory Board at Help University.

MOL AccessPortal’s flagship offering is MOLePoints, an online micropayment system that allows members to pay for online content and services without the use of credit cards. It was one of the first online micropayment systems approved by Bank Negara Malaysia, and boasts some 200,000 members who can purchase MOLePoints through its various physical and virtual channels across the country.

I think this is very promising plan as MOLePoints are working with cybercafes. It is helpful as young students or those who just started to work had no credit cards, they can very well use MOLePoints to purchase their online games etc. Ganesh’s business model is to build an eco-system around which his e-payment services can thrive.

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Norbik Bashah Idris – CEO of Scan Associates

Prof. Dato' Dr. Norbik Bashah bin Idris is Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Scan Associates Berhad. He is Founder of the Company. He has been Board Member since September 9, 2000. He is also Member of Remuneration Committee. He graduated in 1982 from the University of New South Wales in Australia. Later, he obtained a Master Degree from the University of Queensland in 1985. In 1995, he received a Doctorate in Computer Security from the University of Wales United Kingdom and Professional Certificate in Software Engineering from Universite' Thales Paris. As security professional, he obtained his credentials as early as 1987 from the Computer Systems Security Professional Inc., Rhode Island United States (USA). Later, he added to his list the CISSP (Certification for Information System Security Professional) from ISC2, Florida, USA and more recently the CISM (Certified Information Security Manager) from ISACA, Illinois, USA. His career started as academician at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in 1983. In 1996 he helped to establish the Center for Advanced Software Engineering (CASE) in UTM and later became its Director and Visiting Professor to other universities. In the formative years of the Company, he was responsible to strategically engineer the Company to become a brand name in Information Security in Malaysia and the region. This he achieved when in 2007 he received the "Distinguished Senior IT Security Professional Award for Asia-Pacific" from ISC2, and the "Innovative Entrepreneur of the Year" from the Malaysian Malay Chamber of Commerce. In May 2009, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Company.

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Harres Tan – CEO of HT Consulting
 

 
Harres mentioned that today software doesm’t offer that kind of huge profit margin as before anymore. In fact, it is heading towards free with open source alternatives readily available. Hence he co-founded a new business HT Consulting in 1994. The company started off providing pure IT consulting services but later added software development to its offerings. It started HT Softlab to create its own suite of enterprise applications.

It then offered its software together with suitable hardware conceptually designed by the company and contract manufactured in Europe. Hence offering a complete solution to the companies.

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