Malaysian builders tell their stories from the start.
Tech This Way is a Malaysian interview show where founders and academics trace their careers from their first ventures onward, in unhurried, free-flowing conversation. Guests include a former director of a university commercialisation centre and people from Easyparcel, Monthley and BrandGeeks, and the pandemic and the MCO are never far from the talk.
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Tech This Way is a Malaysian interview show with a simple method and a lot of patience. The questions start at the beginning. Guests are invited to go as far back as they want, to the most formative stretch of their lives, and to walk forward from there. When one guest asks at the outset whether the recording gets edited, the answer is that it runs free flow, and the conversations keep that loose, unhurried shape. Technology is the banner, but careers are the real material: first ventures, bad timing, second attempts. Hisham, talking about growing Monthley, begins with his hometown in Perak and a computer science degree. Then he gets to the practical side of the work, where most customers run flats and low-cost apartments, alongside private schools. At the end he admits he was nervous and almost turned the interview down. The Easyparcel guest, finally met in person in Penang, goes back to a daily-deal voucher site started after returning from the UK in 2010, and the talk notes how fast the public came to understand e-commerce. Arief explains how he did development projects through joint ventures with owners and a big contractor, and what he did when a long shot fell through. By the close, the talk has turned to towing services and workshops. The episode with Prof Yasmin looks at universities from the inside, from decades as a researcher to her time at UMCIC. It then wanders to why tech clusters, Cyberjaya included, never grew the way people hoped. Azran recalls a catch-up at Stanford with a health tech founder. That meeting made the siloed nature of healthcare, where each specialist sees only one part of the patient, look like a more interesting problem than getting viewers hooked on TV series. The BrandGeeks couple make a blunt case that entrepreneurs without a brand of their own had it tough in the pandemic, and that waiting for a grant is no reason to stop learning. English and Malay trade places mid-sentence, with a 'lah' here and an Assalamualaikum at sign-off there. COVID is a constant backdrop, from jokes about sitting one meter apart to an interview that could not wait for a face-to-face meeting once the MCO arrived. Endings stay informal; one closes with plans to go find burgers or nasi kandar. Titles such as 'Prof Yasmin on commercialising university IPs' and 'Building a brand beyond just building a business.. with BrandGeeks' show a range that runs from university IP to brand building. A good entry point is 'Azran's always up for a challenge, and it has shaped his journey so far', where the free-flow exchange comes right at the start. The payoff is a set of first-hand accounts of how people built companies in Malaysia, told at the speed of real conversation.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes founder stories told from the very beginning, with room for detours, and who wants to know how businesses in Malaysia were built and kept going through the pandemic.
What sets it apart: Instead of chasing product news, it asks each guest to start from their most formative years and lets the talk run free flow, in an easy mix of English and Malay rooted in Malaysia's business scene.
Technology is driving a lot of changes around the world including here in Malaysia. But who's doing what ?.. where ?.. how ? This program talks to various tech leaders, shapers, observers or just the plain curious to answer these questions.
Between nasi ayam branding and university spin-offs, your tech curiosity gets very Malaysian coordinates.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tech This Way links pandemic resilience to the harder question of whether a business has built a real brand.
Tech This Way frames a pandemic-era branding question as a test of business fundamentals. When disruption strips away momentum, the episode asks what is left for entrepreneurs who have persistence but no clear brand of their own.
A professor follows the untidy route from virology research into university commercialisation and startup ecosystems.
Commercialising university research seldom fits a tidy career map, and the professor's move from virology researcher to director of a university Centre of Innovation and Commercialisation gives this episode its spine.
A grounded Kuantan-to-KL entrepreneurial story about shared risk, community work, and a next move still taking shape.
Tech This Way follows an entrepreneur's path from Kuantan to Kuala Lumpur, with the conversation moving through earlier ventures, community work, and his current thinking around towing services and workshops.
A restless founder links regional ambition to a health tech mission shaped by family illness and care gaps.
Azran Osman Grani comes through as a founder driven less by a tidy career plan than by a restless need to keep moving. He traces the line from an engineering degree chosen as the path of least pain to work that carried him across Southeast Asia and toward ambitions beyond the…
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Asian founders and executives on how they got here
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BrandGeeks says the pandemic pushed Malaysian SMEs from offline selling to "get a brand online," with Grab, Shopee, Lazada, and QR payments changing what survival looks like.
Prof Yasmin says Malaysia keeps asking for "TRL 9" products, while startups are still building at TRL 6 or 7.
Arief says his engine-oil business jumped from 10,000 sales to 1.2 million in one month, then exposed a 1.9 million hole.
Azran Osman Grani traces a path from Stanford in California to McKinsey, where he says consulting taught him to "challenge existing knowledge" and jump into new industries quickly.
Rapid Development wants Monthly to become a single billing platform for kindergarten fees, JMB maintenance, and even telecom or insurance bills.
Malek Ali says BFM aims to make Malaysian businesses and managers more competitive and to build “first world Malaysians.” He describes funding KL Classifieds with RM1.5 million, including RM300,000 he borrowed, just before the Asian financial crisis shrank the Malay Mail’s classified section from 120 pages to 18.
Queenie founded Memori after three family deaths in half a year made her consider end-of-life planning.
Indy says his 2,500-buck bicycle case went unused after two days of use, despite friends having spare bags.
An interview with a tech entrepreneur discussing the evolution of e-commerce logistics in Malaysia.
An interview with the founder of Dr Encore, an online healthcare startup in Malaysia, discussing the rising cost of healthcare and their solution.
The host discusses LinkedIn's live streaming service and its benefits for building an audience, with examples from a guest's experience.
An interview with a tech leader discussing 25 years of tech-driven economic transformation in Asia, particularly Malaysia.