Puff out our chests proudly and celebrate

“It’s Malaysia Day tomorrow”, I said on Monday September 15th to Rochelle, a photographer and writer from Texas, United States.

“Oh yes, I know”, she replied and nodded with a bright smile on her face. “This is our first visit to Asia. We really like it here,” she added.

Rochelle and her husband have traveled to several continents before moving to Malaysia a year ago. She currently works for a female American entrepreneur, Amy at a company called “The Batik Boutique”, while managing her own company “Crossing Borders Media” that offers professional photography services.

“The Batik Boutique” aims to empower women and make an impact in the community. On the company’s website, it highlights the talented female “batik artisans” from Malaysia who have been mostly spending hours working behind the scenes, bringing the wonderful women to the forefront as the faces of the company. In addition to empowering women, the company also collaborated with the Cempaka Education Center to enable poorer families gain access to free English classes for their children.

Rochelle is not the first expat entrepreneur who has expressed that Malaysia is a great place to launch and manage their business and call this rich and peaceful land, their second home.

Increasingly, I am meeting more entrepreneurs in their early to mid-twenties and early thirties setting up their business in and around Kuala Lumpur.

For instance, Hijab2Go, an online shop that offers a variety of hijab to choose from, was started by a Canadian and Danish entrepreneur. The same team of entrepreneurs who started Hijab2Go are driven to empower a new wave of local entrepreneurs through Mother Goose Venture Developer and Halal Tech Venture Builder to nurture a new generation of tech-based companies in Malaysia.

Then there is TrustedCompany which is mostly based in Malaysia. Started by two German and one Malaysian entrepreneur in their mid-twenties, they take note of the market opportunity where customers would only shop online at e-commerce sites that they trust, hence established a review-driven community to rate e-commerce companies through customer reviews and ratings. They have recently raised a US$1 million Series A funding to grow the business to the next level.

Global technology startups such as Uber and Rocket Internet’s EasyTaxi, FoodPanda, Lazada and Zalora have also gained a strong foothold in the local market through competitive marketing strategies and by tapping into the local talent pool.

For the past decade the world is better connected and has become ever more competitive for creative talents to thrive. On a positive note, it had also brought tremendous opportunities to this region.

While many are starting to look to Southeast Asia to kick start their businesses, I believe it is also high time that as locals we start to believe more in our capabilities to thrive in this market and beyond.

For one, Malaysia has the most number of tech initial public offerings (IPO) in Southeast Asia and is home to some of the largest internet companies in the region. Our potential as a nation is endless.

This Malaysia Day, let us puff out our chests proudly and celebrate the richness and diversity that this land nurtured and enabled.

We love you, Malaysia. Thank you, Malaysia.