Tag Archives: business

* Malaysia’s Anthony Tan Leads GrabTaxi in Regional App Race

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By Susan J. Cunningham
Forbes Asia

This story appears in the March 2015 issue of Forbes Asia as “Hailing Taxis, Building a Business”

When Anthony Tan graduated from Harvard Business School in 2011, he was expected to rejoin his two older brothers at the family firm, Tan Chong Motors. Instead, the youngest Tan, now 33, decided to strike out on his own with a mobile taxi app developed for a school business-plan contest. His mother was one of the original angel investors; his father, Tan Heng Chew (No. 16 on the richest Malaysians list), wasn’t. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, though. Anthony says he was inspired by his entrepreneurial grandfather, Tan Yuet Foh, who was a Kuala Lumpur taxi driver before building the multinational auto sales-and-assembly empire.

Tan’s GrabTaxi wasn’t the first mobile hailing app untethered to a specific taxi company. But the concept was novel in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru when Tan launched what was then called MyTeksi in June 2012. For passengers the free smartphone app enables them to hail a cab from any taxi company, regardless of their location, as well as see the identity of their driver, the route to their destination and the estimated fare. For taxi drivers the app not only earns them an extra fee (the equivalent of 28 U.S. cents for each fare in Kuala Lumpur), but also saves them from wasting gas and … MORE

* Myanmar Digital Startup NEX Wins 2nd Round Funds From Blibros

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Myanmar digital startup NEX has won second round funding of  US$150,000 from Singapore’s Blibros Group, the privately-held investment arm of Sweden’s Böcker family. Yes, this is the family of Magnus Böcker, CEO of the Singapore Exchange and former CEO of Nasdaq OMX Nordic. NEX got its initial angel investment of $50,000 last year from Singapore  investor Ned Phillips, formerly of  E*Trade and Chi-East.

I met NEX’s founder and CEO, Ye Myat Min, who’s all of 23, a few months ago when I was in Yangon. NEX had 15 employees then; now there’s 20.  The new investment will enable the company to build on Fyre, its Web-based software introduced in May  that enables small businesses to quickly set up an online storefront. One of the first customers was TAC, the country’s first authorized re-seller of Apple products.  ”Most small shops want an app, but they can’t afford to get their own. Instead, they can pay … MORE

 

* Pete Bodharamik Goes Big on Broadband

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Forbes Asia July 2013 Richest Thais

Jasmine’s Pete Bodharamik

By Susan J. Cunningham
Forbes Asia

Five years ago Pete Bodharamik was a 35-year-old with a big challenge. He had just taken over as chief executive of Jasmine International, the telecom holding company his father had started back in 1982. It was going through rough times, emerging from years in bankruptcy court after his father had diversified madly on borrowed money in the 1990s.

One of Jasmine’s biggest assets, a 30% share of fixed-line operator TT&T, was in bankruptcy itself. And expectations weren’t high that Pete was the one to turn things around. He had held what he calls a “small job” at Jasmine for a few years, dabbling (and losing) in the dot-com boom, before leaving in 2003. “It was surprising,” one equity analyst recalls. “To many observers he was just a rich boy with a big inheritance. No one thought him capable of cleaning up his dad’s mess.” MORE