Featured in the Media – Page 34 – Asia School of Business

SOCIAL networks are the most prominent source of support in encouraging individuals to start a business, research has found. Research by the Asia School of Business (ASB) found that social networks provide financial and social capital as well as practical help and business opportunities. Conducted as part of its Rapid Youth Success Entrepreneurship (RYSE) programme, the survey involved 37 Malaysian micro and small business owners with ages ranging from the 20s to late 30s.

Most MSMEs know the fundamentals to do business and the only assistance that they need is funding, says Melati

The research author, Dr Melati Nungsari said the people she interviewed are, in fact, people who already have businesses and who are already making sales.“So, these people definitely have the entrepreneur intention (EI),” she told The Malaysian Reserve (TMR). According to the ASB assistant professor of economics, some individuals act upon their EI due to their financial situation on the back of the unprecedented collapse in employment.

“When the pandemic happened and unemployment went up, we saw that entrepreneurship was one of the things that people went into,” she said. She noted that roadside stalls also increased by more than 200% during the pandemic, based on her recent study. “I think Malaysians in general are very entrepreneurial and it is sort of within our culture already,” she added.

Notably, entrepreneurial traits such as proactiveness, resourcefulness and passion enable individuals to overcome entrepreneurial structural constraints, such as lack of resources and negative action-related emotions. Meanwhile, she said that organisations such as schools, universities and employers play an important role in instilling the motivation for a career shift to entrepreneurship and providing opportunities to upskill.

“The role of organisations in upskilling and providing an entrepreneur-friendly environment is also instrumental in increasing the propensity of start-up behaviour,” she noted. On the other hand, the research found that the role of macroenvironmental factors such as governmental support play less prominent roles in the narratives of entrepreneurs. “We were trying to understand what actually drove the entrepreneurs to open up businesses, however, government support was not mentioned very much.

“We found that successful micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) owners did not actually benefit a lot from the government programmes although the government spends a lot of money on business training programmes,” she said. Melati noted that most MSMEs know the fundamentals to do business and the only assistance that they need is funding as well as connections to expand their customer base and suppliers.

“These people already know what to do for their business and it will be more helpful when the government helps them to market and expand their connections,” she added. Melati opined that the government should conduct an impact assessment for every entrepreneurship programme they have conducted to ensure the success of those programmes.

Moreover, the research found important implications for governments and policymakers in implementing support for those transitioning from salaried employment to self-employment. “Combined with the importance of having entrepreneurial personality traits, which enable individuals to overcome structural barriers, these findings have important implications for expanding entrepreneurship interventions beyond monetary, incentive-based approaches while also including character development approaches,” she noted.

On the online marketplace, Melati saw this platform as very beneficial for a lot of MSMEs, especially during the lockdown. “The e-commerce basically widens their customer base, especially during the pandemic — so they had to rely on bigger platforms to sell their products as well as to reach their customers,” she said. However, relying too much on the online platform also comes with drawbacks, mainly for food vendors that had to rely on the p-hailing platforms and were charged platform fees and commissions.

“If the MSME profit margin is not very high and they are giving a lot into the platform — that could be a problem,” she said. Nonetheless, she viewed that the way forward for MSMEs in Malaysia is to start taking entrepreneurship as a high-value and high-volume generating activity to help increase opportunities in the labour market. “When we talk about entrepreneurship in Malaysia, we tend to think about very low-value ways to generate income, thus, it would be really nice if we could take the conversation to higher values.

“It is about time we should think about businesses that actually innovate new social development and do interesting technological advancements,” she further said. Meanwhile, ASB is currently conducting the RYSE programme which aims to promote upward mobility and lower youth unemployment rates. RYSE is open to the public to train young people with the skills needed to plan, design and operate their own businesses from scratch.

Originally published by The Malaysian Reserve.

Less Toxic, More Human
Work Better with Professor Loredana’s New Book, “The Job Is Easy, The People Are Not!”

As the workplace continues to shift in new and uncharted directions, Professor Dr Loredana Padurean, Senior Associate Dean at Asia School of Business (ASB) and International Faculty Fellow at MIT Sloan, tackles the age-old question of “What are the skills of the future?” in her book, The Job Is Easy, The People Are Not!

In a world where leaders are expected to be technically, mentally, and emotionally competent, the workplace has become more complex, with new values and procedures adding a unique set of challenges and concerns to leaders, employees, and the overall work environment.

That’s where The Job Is Easy, The People Are Not!, and its accompanying Spotify podcast, comes in. Featuring a collection of refreshingly candid conversations with professionals in the ASB and MIT Sloan community, Prof. Loredana’s latest book aims to provide readers with the necessary skills and insight to help them navigate their professional life.

“The field of management is primarily about managing people and their impact on various aspects of a business. From organisational behaviour to operations management, economics to entrepreneurship, and change management to digital transformation, the one variable that always creates complexities is people,” says Prof. Loredana.

After reevaluating the concept of “Soft and Hard skills” in the workplace, Prof. Loredana found these traditional terms to be limited and misleading. To better reflect the true needs of the individual professional, she identified the 10 Smart skills that proved essential for becoming better leaders – and people.

While conceptually the same, “Smart and Sharp” differs from “Soft and Hard” on a psychological level, where the latter gives fixed meaning to skill sets, and the former allows adaptability. Knowing how to manage people is not “Soft,” it is just being “Smart,” while technical skills are not “Hard” and set in stone, but need to be constantly sharpened as technology evolves.

Seeing the importance of developing “Smart” people skills, Prof. Loredana conceptualised the “Top 10 Smart Skills” to not only help people become better coworkers but also better people. By the end of reading the book, the reader will gain a solid understanding of The Top 10 Smart Skills, from emotional maturity and humility to validation, listening, and managing up.

Exploring the very human challenge of working with others, especially when coworkers do not see eye to eye, The Job Is Easy, The People Are Not comprises 10 in-depth interviews between Prof. Loredana and her award-winning fellow academics and colleagues, such as Prof. Charles Fine, Chrysler Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former Dean of Asia School of Business; Prof.

Roberto Fernandez, William F. Pounds Professor in Management and a Professor of Organisation Studies; Dr Hadija Mohd, Senior Lecturer at ASB; and Prof. Yi-Ren Wang, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at ASB, among others. In addition to personal, professional and theoretical anecdotes, each chapter provides practical suggestions about how to develop “Smart” skills to better navigate the complex waters of working with others.

Armed with these insights, readers will find both the job – and the people – becoming easier. As such, this book is invaluable for leaders and professionals at any stage of their careers who desire to nurture a better working environment.

The Job Is Easy, The People Are Not! is now available in paperback and Amazon Kindle. The accompanying podcast is now available on Spotify.
To learn more about the “Smart and Sharp skills” curated by Prof. Loredana, visit www.smartxsharp.com.

About the Author

Prof. Dr Loredana Padurean is the Associate Dean at Asia School of Business, a collaboration between the Central Bank of Malaysia and MIT Sloan School of Management, and an International Faculty Fellow at MIT Sloan. Loredana is the Faculty Director for Action Learning and Innovation and Entrepreneurship at ASB. Prof.

Loredana has been an energising force behind the establishment of the school and, in particular, the development of MIT Sloan-devised action learning programmes in Asia, in collaboration with corporate partners in the region. Under her leadership, the Action Learning programme at ASB was recognised repeatedly as one of the most innovative programmes in the world.

She is an international keynote and TedX speaker that shared the stage with Steve Wozniak, Bob Geldof, ministers, deans, authors and public figures in the United States, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

Prof. Loredana has taught in various MIT Sloan executive programmes such as the Executive Programme in General Management (EPGM), the MIT Scaling Bootcamp, Driving Strategic Innovation, at IMD Lausanne and Cambridge, MA, as well as regional companies such as AirAsia, AIIB, MIDF, Thomson Hospital, AXIATA ADA, Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council, China Construction Bank, Maybank, CIMB, Prudential, Khazanah Nasional and many more.

Her most recent research, “Jungle, Mountain, Ocean – A Startup Journey,” focuses on understanding the evolution of start-ups from scale-ups to sail-ups. Prof. Loredana has an MA in Communication and Economics and a PhD in Management from USI Switzerland.

To learn more about Prof. Dr Loredana Padurean, visit her website at www.prof-loredana.com.

Originally published by The Iskandarian.

Sipjoy is a cafe-focused mobile app platform that connects local independent cafés to coffee drinkers and café goers with one-flat-price coffee pass that allows cross-café coffee redemption. They have recently won 2nd place in the ASB101k Start-Up track. Vincent Sin founder and CEO of the SipJoy App together with Evelyn Saw joins us today to unravel their coffee journey.

Listen to the full interview below.

Originally published by BFM.

Professor Yi-Ren Wang, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in ASB, recently received the 2022 S. Rains Wallace Dissertation Award, selected by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s (SIOP) Awards Committee.

In her dissertation – Precariousness, Anticipatory Justice, and Belief in Delayed Pay-Off Affect Workers’ Intertemporal Choice Orientation: Implications on Socioeconomic Mobility, Yi-Ren explored some of the psychological barriers that hinder upward mobility among workers who lack job stability.

Compared to workers in more secure work arrangements, workers in these situations are less likely to believe their efforts will be rewarded in the future and, as a result, tend to show less personal initiative, tend to hold lower career aspirations, and engage in less self-development.

By understanding these psychological factors, organizations can work to create a more equitable work environment, and as a society, we can become more understanding and inclusive instead of dubbing those less fortunate as “lazy”.

The SIOP gives this award to the person who completes the best doctoral dissertation research germane to the field of I-O psychology. The winning dissertation research demonstrates the use of research methods that are both rigorous and creative.

ASB congratulates Professor Yi-Ren for her extraordinary achievement and contributions to the field!
#ASBfaculty #smartXsharp #extraordinary #unconventional

How have you implemented the advice you give in your book “The Job is Easy, The People are Not – 10 Smart Skills to Become Better People” in your own life?

As a professor, I learn best when I teach, and that’s how this journey of writing this started. The book was actually inspired by two real life experience: one, my personal global leadership journey, a journey that challenged me to extreme heights, and two, seeing my MBA students struggle to work with their own peers and external stakeholders, especially in globally diverse settings.

Each of the 10 smart skills (I refuse to call these critically important skills soft, as there is nothing soft about dealing with people) presented in my book was inspired by the people I work with, by numerous conversations and realizations, and many moments of self-reflection. These 10 smart skills are: emotional maturity, managing up, validation, humility, followership, productive inclusion, multiple perspectives, adaptability, cognitive readiness, and listening.

I selected these smart skills by observing and thinking about what makes our Asia School of Business (ASB) students successful in working in dynamic and diverse Action Learning work environments. I spent a lot of time talking to leaders in ASB and MIT Sloan executive programs, conferences, events, and many other settings and learnt what skills the industry is looking for.

But by no means is this set of skills exhaustive or exclusive of numerous other skills. What I hope is for the list presented in my book to spark a conversation and reflections on becoming better people. In my own attempt to become among these “better people”, I learnt how my emotional immaturity can stress my team and organization. I tried and failed repeatedly to become more humble, to truly listen and follow up when it is time to do so.

I learnt that a strength, when not calibrated correctly, becomes a weakness: you probably like my energy, passion, fast mind, and gregarious personality, but you will find me uncomfortable. The next step was teaching these skills in my MBA and executive programs. The reactions were astounding. Everyone seemed to resonate to the skills and have a story on how hard is to work with others.

In May, I was teaching at MIT Sloan a different topic, but since my book was just released, I spent about an hour on this subject and the participants couldn’t get enough! Turns out working with other people is a universal challenge. So, more than advice for me, and I hope for many in my organization these skills are a daily reminder on how we can be better at working with people.

What “Smart Skill” do you find that most people struggle with and why?

We all struggle with some more than another, but the most surprising one was validation, a skill that I define as an evidence-based affirmation and recognition for someone’s work contribution, feelings, or efforts. Validation is different than feedback or compliments, because of its evidence-based nature and is a powerful tool when used well, because not only motivates you forward, but also is a training tool on how to continue to do better.

However, what I have learnt is that people who rely too much on external validation, can become validation addicts. These are the people that make everything about themselves, that want recognition for just simply doing their job, that steal the spotlight and don’t share the success with their teams. They can be energy vampires and are very difficult to work with.

The paradox is though that because they crave external validation, they work hard to get it so many of them become leaders, role which in itself is a validation fountain if you want. However, healthy validation is important and essential for a productive relationship, both personal and professional. Telling someone in a meeting or in private how specifically their effort and work added value, is free but priceless.

What were your sticking points in writing this book, where did you find you were having a hard time writing?

I actually never intended to write this book, but because I teach about this stuff, I got a lot of requests to do it. However, as good as I am, I cannot speak about these skills only from my perspective, because it would be terribly myopic, wouldn’t it? So, after a lot of thought, I realized that the only way I can write about people is to ask other people what they do to make it easier to work together.

And since I have 10 skills, I interviewed for each skill someone who I thought excelled in their smart skills and who would be able to teach me and the readers how to be better from that perspective. The interviews are going to be part of a podcast series as well as a video series to be released in August 2022 and each chapter of the book has a QR code that gives you access to all episodes. Or you can just visit www.smartXsharp.com and you can find all the interviews on my page.

Your novel is made up of a number of candid conversations, what conversation left a surprisingly lasting impression on you and why?

I chose to interview people I know really well, and I didn’t expect to be surprised to be honest. But I learnt so many new things about my colleagues and friends. My favorite MIT Sloan Prof. Roberto Fernandez who I interviewed for emotional maturity is one of the most charismatic, energetic and engaging speakers you will ever see, but he confessed to be a shy introvert just like me!

Prof. Charlie Fine, also from MIT Sloan, admitted that as a leader of Asia School of Business he had to practice a lot of paranoia to be more cognitively ready for whatever the job threw at him. And Emily Preiss taught me that one could be too adaptive which is actually quite taxing on our nervous system! Honestly, each interview taught me so much and left me humbled, which is a smart skill that I define as “the more I learn, the less I know”.

What message would you want people to take away after reading your book?

I end my book by wondering will the job still going to be easy and people still hard after reading this book? Of course. It’s part of the human experience to challenge ourselves, and others, and to keep growing from the process.

But what I hope that after reading the book we will realize that we are all difficult and we are responsible of making both the job and the experience of working together not just easier, but more positive, more productive, and most importantly, more meaningful. Because at the end of the day, the business of business is not business.

The business of business is people! As hard or easy as we might be.

You can download the e-book on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/job-easy-people-are-not-ebook/dp/B0B28Y8DY3
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5Poj0cnIhXMKD3cNSEQ9Cq?si=e5f5b55a73c04f89
You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-job-is-easy-the-people-are-not/id1536420034
To learn more about Prof. Loredana Padurean you can visit www.prof-loredana.com and www.smartXsharp.com

Read the full article HERE.
Originally published by Women in Business Education (WiBE). WiBE is a global network that champions women’s leadership in business academia.

The Sarawak Centre of Performance Excellence (SCOPE) in collaboration with the Asia School of Business (ASB) and the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre organized an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Awareness Workshop on Monday.

A report by Sarawak Public Communications Unit (Ukas) said the workshop, themed ‘Driving the Green Agenda’ at SCOPE Auditorium was held in conjunction with the coming International Digital Economy Conference Sarawak (IDECS) 2022 as part of its Digital Satellite Programme.

Deputy Minister of Energy and Environmental Sustainability Dr Hazland Abang Hipni said in the report that ESG refers to three main factors to measure the sustainability and ethical impact of investing in a business or company.

“Currently, there are certain financial institutions that will use ESG to evaluate a company and some large companies such as the oil and gas industry cannot get funding because they do not comply with ESG standards.

“So we want the big industries in Sarawak, especially the hydrocarbon industry, to be aware of this,” he said. Dr. Hazland also said the workshop was held as an initiative to encourage large industries in Sarawak in developing nature conservation mindset.

Originally published by The Borneo Post.

Asia Asset Management (AAM), Asia’s oldest journal for the buy-side industry, is pleased to announce that its academic adviser Joseph Cherian, practice professor of finance at Singapore’s NUS Business School, will be heading back to his alma maters, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University.

He has been appointed visiting practice professor of finance at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management (Johnson) at Cornell, and practice professor of finance at the Asia School of Business (ASB), which is a collaboration between the MIT Sloan School of Management and Bank Negara Malaysia.

Both the appointments commence July 1, 2022 and will involve three locations: Kuala Lumpur, New York City (Cornell Tech campus), and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Professor Cherian, who has been working with AAM on various portfolio management-related research projects, forums, panels and written commentaries since 2015, was appointed as the magazine’s academic adviser in October 2019.

His most recent essays for AAM are on the investability of cryptos as an institutional asset class (February 11, 2022), and the financial feasibility of achieving lofty climate science and net zero targets within a certain deadline by governments and firms around the world (June 1, 2022).

Professor Cherian will continue to serve in his faculty role as the bridge between the academic (theory) and financial industry (practice) at both his new affiliations. “We are very excited to have Professor Cherian returning to Johnson. His combination of academic rigour and extensive industry experience is exceptional, and we know he will inspire as well as educate the next generation of business leaders who are pursuing a Johnson MBA,” says Professor Mark Nelson, Johnson’s Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean.

At the ASB, Professor Cherian will offer executive education programmes, as well as courses for the MBA and Masters of Central Banking programmes, both delivered in collaboration with MIT Sloan School faculty.

“We have enthusiastically welcomed Joe to ASB and our growing institution. I and others look forward to working with him in Kuala Lumpur as well as on campus at MIT in Cambridge,” says Professor Charles Fine, CEO and Dean of the ASB, and Chrysler LGO professor of management at MIT Sloan School.

Tan Lee Hock, founder and publisher of AAM says: “We are delighted to learn of Joe’s latest appointments, and we very much look forward to working with him on the various programmes that he initiated while in Singapore; these programmes have been well-received by the investment and pensions community that AAM covers in Asia. ”

Prior to joining NUS in 2009, Professor Cherian was managing director, global head, and chief investment officer in the quantitative strategies group of Credit Suisse Alternative Investments in New York. In that role, he had direct responsibility for over US$67 billion of client assets.

Professor Cherian holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from MIT, and a masters and doctorate in finance from Cornell, where he is a member (emeritus) of the Johnson Dean’s Advisory Council.

Originally published by Asia Asset Management (AAM).

After an extraordinary series of global supply chain snags caused by the pandemic, the next generation of central bankers is taking a page from the business school play book, learning how the market reacts to bottlenecks and what monetary policy can do to help.

The educational shift, seen recently at a master’s programme in Malaysia for young policy makers, underscores how the flow of goods has become key to understanding the way two years of supply chain snarls helped drive up consumer prices the fastest in decades.

As part of the course, set up by the Asia School of Business with backing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students play the ‘Root Beer Game’, a version of the decades-old classic in MBA programmes that helps illustrate supply and demand signals and dynamics, from producers down to consumers.

Young officials played alongside students from the business school, allowing them an opportunity to simulate how the flow of goods impacts monetary policy decision making. “It corresponds to what happens in the real world,” says Vipichbolreach Long, of the National Bank of Cambodia, who played the role of a retailer. “We can see the chaos in the supply chain with manufacturers and wholesalers confused when the signal from downstream was unclear, and what that means for monetary policy transmission,” Long says.

There’s been no shortage of teachable moments on the course as the pandemic forced central banks to unleash trillions of dollars’ worth of unprecedented support for governments, households and companies as the world economy froze.

How that stimulus, which helped drive a surge in demand, collided with supply chain issues surprised policy makers globally, including at the Federal Reserve. Initial predictions by policy makers that price pressures caused by supply shortages would prove transitory have fallen flat.

Move earlier

Chair Jerome Powell, testifying before Congress recently acknowledged that, in hindsight, if the Fed understood how the pandemic-induced bottle-necks would collide with strong demand “it would have been appropriate to move earlier” in normalising policy.

That’s among lessons policy makers from Asia, as well as Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Maldives, are learning in the full-time, one-year residential course for a Masters of Central Banking, which includes a six-week programme at MIT. The fee of 365,000 ringgit ($86,700) includes accommodation in Kuala Lumpur and travel to Washington, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While flooding their economies with money helped to drive a quick recovery, the monetary policy binge will leave a legacy that future central bankers will be dealing with for years to come. House prices and stock markets have soared through the pandemic, fuelling concerns over widening inequality, and leaving officials with the challenge of raising rates without crashing the recovery.

The exercise comes as policy makers the world over are scrambling to work out what, if anything, central banks can do in response to supply driven inflation. Eli Remolona, who runs the course, says the ‘root beer’ exercise offers lessons on how lag effects work and how hard it can be to predict the way policy impacts the economy.

“We leverage on the pandemic and how central banks have responded,” says Remolona, who formerly was chief Asia-Pacific representative at the Bank for International Settlements and also had a long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In another assignment away from their text books, the young officials are given the opportunity to critique press conferences given by the Fed’s Powell and his European Central Bank counterpart, Christine Lagarde, in order to hone their own communication skills.

It’s especially important to monitor the likes of the Fed and ECB given their policy moves eventually spill over to emerging market economies, says Arlene Aguinaldo of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. “It does make us appreciate how difficult it is to communicate well” on monetary policy, she says.

Better equipped

The curriculum covers topics that include crisis prevention, behavioural finance, cybersecurity, digital currencies and ethics. Advisers to the course span the world of central banking such as Zeti Aziz, former governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, Robert Merton, MIT academic and Nobel Laureate in economics.

Students interviewed for this article, who spoke in a personal capacity and were not representing their central banks, say the programme allows them to hear from world leading economists and former policy makers while at the same time networking with peers from emerging economy central banks. “We cannot give a guarantee we’ll prevent the next crisis,” says Yi Duan Ho, of Bank Negara Malaysia. “But we are better equipped to go through it.”

Read the full article HERE.
Originally published by Gulf Business.

AS her family members faced issues in managing orders for their online business during the Covid-19 pandemic, Wooi Zhuang Ru came up with an automated management solution. That solution to simplify the work for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and live streamers was the inspiration behind her recent win at the regional finals of the ASB101K Entrepreneurship Competition (Student Track), which saw her three-member team bagging the first prize worth RM101,000.

Calling themselves the Ottermate Team, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) students Wooi and How Chao Xun – who study computer science and financial economics, respectively – together with Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TAR UC) graphic design student Tee Kuok Hin, emerged the grand prize winner after beating three other teams at the regional finals.

The competition, hosted by the Asia School of Business, had two tracks – namely, the Student Track and the Startup Track – which were open to students and aspiring entrepreneurs from South-East Asia (SEA). Tasked with addressing current market challenges and opportunities through innovative technology-driven solutions, the Ottermate Team came up with a social media business enabler – named Ottermate, an incubatee at UTAR Unovate Centre – which offers an all-in-one live commerce management solution for retail live streamers.

Its key purpose is to provide an accessible, user-friendly and hands-off approach to order management, built with social media sales in mind. Ottermate founder Wooi, who is also the team leader, said the original idea came from her family members who owned SMEs and ran them traditionally over the years but were forced to transition to online business due to the pandemic.

“Ottermate started as a simple solution to a personal problem but my team and I eventually found its potential for growth. And that is how we are here today,” she said in a recent press release. Speaking of their win, she attributed the team’s success to their advisors and mentors – UTAR alumnus Pang Chong Xian, UTAR lecturer Tan Chiang Kang and UTAR Unovate Centre Dr Lee Sheng Chyan.

“This was truly a team effort. Everyone in the team worked very hard to write a compelling business document and prepare for our question and answer session. “This applies to our mentors from UTAR and ASB101K, as well. We are really grateful they took time out to help us with our business idea and find answers to difficult questions,” she said, pointing out that her team “weren’t filled with seasoned entrepreneurs or competition-goers”.

She shared that she herself had felt “very inadequate” initially, especially in the first two rounds while creating the decks and documents, because of her non-business background. “We were very lucky to get Fabian Boegershausen as our mentor from ASB101K. He helped us with our business calculations and went above and beyond to bring his expertise to the table. I’d say we definitely could not have done it without him,” she added.

Through their participation in the competition, Wooi said they had picked up some valuable learning points. “We learnt how important it is to get advice and iterate over ideas; a sentence can be said in many different ways but getting the concept down can be a very tedious process. “I really value the input from external people, be they mentors or even my parents.

Putting ourselves out there, asking for feedback and listening to advice helped us a lot in understanding our product and how the public perceives our product. “We were also able to anticipate the potential questions we would get during the Q&A,” she added. Having won the substantial prize money, the team plans to launch the Ottermate after going for a Series A seed round.

“The prize money will allow us to scale up our team and speed up development, so the majority of it will go into that,” she said, adding that she is splitting a small portion of the money among the team. Team mentor Tan advised students to be proactive in order to get the most out of such competitions. “Students need to stay focused, do their groundwork, and be as prepared as they can be.

If they have done that, even if they don’t win anything, the experience will still be invaluable in their startup journey,” he said. In the press release, UTAR president Prof Dr Ewe Hong Tat congratulated the Ottermate Team, Unovate Centre and UTAR Faculty of Information and Communication Technology for their combined efforts which resulted in the achievement.

Prior to the regional finals held on April 2, a total of 24 teams from universities across SEA – the Top 12 for each track – battled it out at the semifinals. Another team from UTAR named Quadrifoglio made it to the Top 50 of the competition in Round 1 .

Originally published by The Star.

MALAYSIA could experience more shortage of domestic helpers if there is no willpower to improve wages and job treatment of foreign workers in the country, experts said. “If wages and treatment do not change, I don’t see much changing in this sector aside from it experiencing more shortages and potentially pushing Malaysians into these jobs, which typically are lower-paying with not many amenities,” Asia School of Business assistant economics Prof Dr Melati Nungsari told The Malaysian Reserve (TMR) in an email interview.

Radical shift, she said, does not only involve increasing wages, it also should look into improving the work package and mindset as a whole. “Our modus operandi of paying little and treating poorly will not work anymore. With higher wages and better policies surrounding the treatment of migrant workers, we could potentially lure them back into our country, but given the current trajectory, this would require a quite radical shift,” she explained.

Indonesia has recently announced that it is phasing out its domestic workers gradually, which experts said may result in households and the agencies scrambling to source from other countries. “As Indonesia, one of the biggest exporters of domestic worker labour to us, phases out domestic workers, we can expect shortages in this sector to continue as demand for such workers does not seem to be declining,” Melati explained.

As a result, the female workforce will be impacted the most and the cost of hiring would be higher, which could potentially see Malaysia losing its female labour. “Women were already disproportionately affected by the pandemic — in general, they occupy the lower-level jobs, which were the first to be laid off, and tend to be engaged in more precarious work.

“Now that the economy and social sector is starting to recover, these women may now be looking to return to the workforce. Question is, however, who will tend to their children? Domestic helpers could help fill in this gap,” she added. Malaysia seeks to expedite the hiring process of foreign workers to fill the vacancies in various sectors, from plantation to domestic work. Malaysia’s rubber industry has lost RM30 billion in the last three years due to the lack of workers.

TMR previously reported that despite the government’s green light, some businesses could not afford to operate fully as in pre-pandemic. Meanwhile, EMIR Research head of social, law and human rights Jason Loh Seong Wei said Malaysia would not be able to reduce heavy reliance on domestic helpers, thus, there is a need to source from other countries — beyond the traditional ones.

He expects severe short-term impact with needy households and the maid agencies looking to source from other countries in the Asean region which would include Timor Leste. “If things become even more desperate, we might even have to start sourcing from beyond such as looking to countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and not least Papua New Guinea,” he told TMR.

“Unless there’s a culture shift whereas in Japan, children are taught to be independent and resourceful from young and robotics play an integral part of daily living, we would continue to be ‘beholden’ to the need for domestic helpers in the long-term and foreseeable future.” He recommended prospective local employers to have pre-employment counselling and briefing sessions for migrant worker treatment.

“We propose that the licensing regime and supervision of recruitment or placement agencies under the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) be subject to stricter approval. In addition, there’s also a need to augment the digitalisation of the application process to cut out the use of these middle-men or brokers,” Loh said.

He added that the role of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Council established under Section 6 of Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007 in investigating and charging enforcement agencies for corruption relating to and collusion in facilitating trafficking activities should be reviewed and strengthened.

Read the full article HERE.
Originally published by The Malaysian Reserve.