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For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. Gyms in Malaysia aren’t known for big profits, and there’s no shortage of them. So why would seven friends who train together open another one? COR3 in Kota Damansara is a “box,” the term functional fitness folks use for their gyms. It’s a semi-outdoor space packed with barbells and weights. Six months after opening, it already has more than 150 members. Joanne Lim and Eddie Yap, two of the seven co-founders, join us to talk about why they started COR3 and how the business works. We discuss:  Seven founders, no single boss: How a group of friends from very different careers makes decisions together, and how they funded the gym. Fitness meets hospitality: What sets COR3 apart, how they make first-timers feel welcome, and why they put community and good coaching first. The business side: Why they chose a semi-open space, how they plan to grow, and their partnership with AirAsia ahead of Malaysia’s first HYROX race this December. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. Virgin Honey makes ready-to-use Acacia honey spoons, with an aim to offer a cleaner and more convenient way to enjoy honey without the mess of a traditional jar. Founded by Veenondhra Subramaniam, the Malaysian FMCG start-up is building a business around a familiar product in a different format. We discuss who buys single-serve honey, how Virgin Honey is building its market, and what it takes to turn a simple product into a scalable food business. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. Kakao Origin serves non-alcoholic drinks made with Malaysian single-origin chocolate, the first of its kind in the country. It started as a stall in Central Market and now has a flagship at Dayabumi. We talk about who pays RM16 to RM20 for a cup of chocolate, how they source beans from Malaysian farmers, and whether a drink shop can boost the local cacao industry.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. Frank Marini started in the mailroom of an American tour company as a part-time college job. Thirty years later he runs Railbookers Group, the world's largest independent rail holiday company. It builds trips around trains - the rail, the hotels, the sightseeing and the transfers. It offers more than 5,200 rail journeys, employs almost 400 people across seven countries, and is the national tour operator for Amtrak in the United States. Last October it opened a Singapore hub to serve Southeast Asia, and Malaysia is now one of its markets. More Asian itineraries are on the way. Frank talks to us about what an independent rail holiday actually is, building a business by listening to customers, and why train travel is having its biggest moment in decades. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. Can children participate in Malaysia’s growing cashless economy without being exposed to the risks of adult financial products? Vircle founder and CEO Gokula Krishnan Subramaniam believes children need a safer way to manage money, but making digital payments accessible also raises questions about regulation, parental oversight and financial literacy. From launching Scan & Pay for Kids to expanding beyond schools with DuitNow QR payments, Gokula shares how Vircle is growing its platform, making everyday spending safer for children, and building a financial service that helps younger users develop better money habits. We discuss: Whether minors can register for e-wallets under Malaysia’s current regulatory framework. How Vircle is making digital payments safer for children. Why the company is expanding beyond schools into everyday spending. How digital payments can help children develop financial literacy. What will it take for Vircle to scale into a sustainable regional fintech. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. A year ago, Tupai came on BFM to talk about Malaysia's maths problem. Since then, the numbers have gotten worse. In SPM 2025, 21.7% of candidates did not pass Mathematics, and in the latest PISA, Malaysia's maths score fell to 397 points, with only 35% of 15-year-olds reaching basic proficiency, against 65% across OECD countries.  We get into: What's new in Tupai 2.0: The new parents app and Tupai 2.0.  The results so far: Tupai's results from schools that use their app.  The business model: How Tupai finances their activities and when they expect to make a profit.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. In 2014, the first SCORE Marathon drew 3,674 runners. Two months ago in Putrajaya, the 2026 edition drew 51,077 across two days - and was officially entered into the Malaysia Book of Records as the largest running event in the country's history. That is a fourteen-fold increase in twelve years, achieved by a company that has never raised a ringgit of external funding. When Patricia Tan and her partners founded SCORE in 2013, they built it the way you build a brand rather than the way you organise an event. Systems, governance, commercial thinking, and a portfolio of owned intellectual property: SCORE Marathon, KL Half Marathon, KL Women Running Festival, the Malaysia Pickleball Championship. Today SCORE is an eight-figure, profitable, entirely bootstrapped business. And it was recently appointed by Sport Singapore to organise the BYD Singapore International Marathon this December.  Patricia joins us to talk about the economics of mass participation sport, curating a world-class experience on a price ordinary Malaysians can afford, and what it takes to build a race a country puts in its record books. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. Everyone has visited a car dealership, yet almost nobody understands the underlying economics. The actual margin on selling a vehicle remains thin; dealerships actually make their money through servicing, parts, and financing. Janessa Kuek operates AG Autoworld, a massive Johor-based Proton 4S dealer group and part of her family's larger enterprise. Under her second-generation leadership, the group recently swept eight major awards at Proton's global conference, securing the PROTON CEO Award and officially cementing its position as Malaysia's highest-volume dealer group. But the traditional auto retail model is currently colliding with a technological shift. Proton’s e.MAS brand now dominates the Malaysian electric vehicle market, capturing over sixty percent of national EV registrations this year. Because EVs require fundamentally less mechanical maintenance, the lucrative aftersales engine is disappearing. To combat this structural threat, Janessa pivoted her strategy to build an ecosystem around the buyer, launching comprehensive lifetime membership clubs and opening the first Proton e.MAS showroom inside a shopping mall to drive alternative value. Janessa joins us to unpack the hidden financial mechanics of a high-volume automotive dealership. We discuss exactly how a second-generation leader reshapes a family business, and what actually happens to a dealership's bottom line when the internal combustion engine disappears. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For more information on BFM's SME event, click the link here. When Inbaraj Suppiah was last on this show, JomHack was a hackathon company - designing and running 48-hour innovation sprints for corporates and government agencies. It is now, to a considerable extent, a school. For the past year JomHack has run a free 30-day Python bootcamp. Daily classes, no fees, and no coding background required. 380 students have been through it, every place sponsored by JomHack itself.  Running alongside that is something considerably larger. In 2024 Gamuda approached Inbaraj to design and implement a free AI Academy, in partnership with Google Cloud, training people in fullstack AI development over three-month cohorts. It is now on its eighth cohort in Kuala Lumpur, its sixth in Sabah, and its maiden edition in Sarawak .  All of it free to the participant. Which raises the obvious question: who pays, and why? Inbaraj Suppiah returns to the studio to talk about how a company built on hackathons ended up building a talent pipeline - and whether giving away training is marketing, or a business model. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Contrast Club opened in Damansara Heights around three months ago: a communal Finnish stone sauna, pool-sized cold plunges, and a hot magnesium pool. You move between them - hot, cold, hot again - in a shared space rather than a private room. That communal choice is the whole idea. Contrast therapy already existed in Kuala Lumpur, but mostly in small rooms built for one or two people. Their bet was that recovery works better as something you do alongside other people — a third space that isn't home and isn't the office. Co-founders Paul Leo Versley and Lyv Koh join us to talk about building a physical, capital-heavy business from scratch, the operational reality of heating a sauna and chilling plunge pools in a tropical climate, and on their hardest problem - persuading people that recovery is a habit, not a treat. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every day, Malaysians discard roughly 13,800 tonnes of food. A significant portion of this isn't consumer waste - it is perfectly edible surplus that merchants produce to manage the unpredictability of daily walk-in traffic. Value Food was built to solve this inefficiency. The app allows merchants to package their unsold inventory into "Value Bags," selling them at a fraction of the original price. This model allows businesses to recover sunk capital on food destined for the landfill, while providing customers with heavily subsidised meals. Despite being entirely self-funded, the startup has already achieved profitability and successfully onboarded over 500 merchant outlets, including global hospitality players like Hilton and Marriott. The platform drives revenue through three distinct streams: merchant subscriptions, per-bag transaction fees, and a unique monetization angle tied to corporate ESG reporting. By proving that sustainability can directly impact a merchant's bottom line, the platform has managed to scale rapidly across the local F&B ecosystem. Founders Hariharan Nagendran and Vishnu Pathmanaban talk to us about building a marketplace out of inventory everyone else was throwing away. We discuss the B2B sales cycle required to convince luxury hotel chains to sell their buffet surplus, exactly why they refuse to position the app as a discount platform, and their strategic rationale for seeking external capital now that the bootstrapped model has been proven. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Spanish Cellar KL is a fully bootstrapped, three-million-ringgit gourmet import business supplying the Malaysian market with premium Spanish olive oils, farmhouse cheeses, wines, saffron, and cured meats. The company operates across three distinct revenue streams: B2B distribution to restaurants and hotels, direct-to-consumer retail, and private dining events.  Founder Victor Dejesus’ trajectory in the F&B import sector is quite unconventional. After arriving in Malaysia on a corporate assignment with IBM, he resigned to remain in the country, launching his first Spanish import enterprise in 2000. He successfully scaled that initial company to six million ringgit in revenue before selling a 70 percent stake to local partners. However, as he watched that entity narrow its operational focus and scale to roughly RM30 million without him at the helm, he made the rare decision to walk away from the massive enterprise he created and restart his original, wider-ranging concept entirely from scratch. Victor joins us to discuss building the exact same F&B business twice in a single market. We also cover importing a foreign gastronomic culture into a region that doesn't naturally reach for it, how a lean operation effectively balances both B2B and B2C revenue streams, and the math behind his ambitious plan to force 50 percent growth in a stagnant post-Covid market. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Otti is a corporate training and research institute focused on what it calls "Human-AI Synergy". The Institute teaches professionals to aggressively leverage AI for productivity without sacrificing independent, critical human thought. Co-founded in 2020 by neuroscientist Aster Wei alongside Cambridge-trained psycholinguist Chang Yin Jue and REDtone technopreneur Dato' Wei Chuan Beng, Otti now generates seven-figure revenue across five distinct streams, recording roughly 740 percent growth since its first operational year.  The institute successfully secures B2B and B2G contracts, boasting a client roster that includes Novartis, Grab, Standard Chartered, DHL, and government entities like the Ministry of Health. Aster joins us to discuss bootstrapping a B2B training institute to seven figures, why she argues that most corporate AI training is selling the wrong framework entirely, and the difficult work of breaking founder dependency to build a company that can scale without its original creators. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three women who have been friends for thirty years each built a business in wellness. Raja Jesrina Arshad scaled PurelyB into an eight-figure superfood brand. Diane Chia co-founded Millennia Village, an integrated lifestyle destination for active seniors. Sarah Lian built Supparetreat, a women-focused wellness community. Then they built something together. The Women Wellness Festival began as a gathering and is now, Malaysia's largest women's wellness event. Two editions, both sold out. The third edition runs on the 3rd and 4th of October at the Hyatt Regency Kuala Lumpur at KL Midtown - Two full days, more than fifty sessions, and a speaker list that includes squash legend Datuk Nicol David, and two-time Hyrox world champion Hannah Prescott. But behind the breathwork and the women's circles is a genuine operating business. Sponsors to sign, a venue to fill, a programme to curate, vendors to vet, hundreds of delegates to move between rooms on schedule, and a set of numbers that has to work. Sarah Lian and Diane Chia join us to talk about the business of building an event this size, including how they knew the demand was there, how it's funded, how they measure whether it worked, and where it goes from here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paws Rehab is Malaysia's leading animal rehabilitation centre, operating as a highly profitable, mid-six-figure enterprise. Founded in 2012 by Sydney Chik, a UK-trained physiotherapist who traveled to the US to become a Certified Canine Rehabilitation Practitioner, the clinic addresses a gap in the local veterinary market.  Offering advanced hydrotherapy, laser therapy, and pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, the fully bootstrapped business treats pets suffering from arthritis, spinal injuries, and paralysis. Over fourteen years, the clinic has processed thousands of complex medical cases and established a robust B2B referral pipeline with traditional veterinary practices. Today, Paws Rehab is expanding its commercial footprint beyond physical clinical hours by launching proprietary joint supplements, specialised rehabilitation products, and digital education platforms. Sydney joins us to talk about bootstrapping a niche medical service from day one, how to build a veterinary referral network from scratch, and the strategic operational shift required to scale a clinic into a scalable product business. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.