SMEAS IV – Event Write Up: SME Accelerator Series: Tagging in the SME’s Community
The SME Accelerator Series (SMEAS) returns for the fourth consecutive year with more to offer micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).
“My teacher once said, every master was once a disaster and I say, every disaster is also a teacher,” says iCFO and iCommunity founder Gan Teck Hooi opening his keynote speech at the event which he advocated and put it out himself.
On September 19th, 2019 at the grand Kristal Hall 1, TM Convention Centre, UNIFI has agreed in a second-year partnership with iCommunity to organised, the fourth series of SME Accelerator Series.
Waving the theme of ‘Small Business Community: Mighty Opportunity’, it aims to build communities around leaders of small businesses by getting the assistance of the nation’s community builders.
“I think it’s about time for community builders in the MSME space to come together and reach out to startup companies within the country.” Being a startup owner himself, he can’t stress hard enough the struggle to begin the entrepreneurship journey,” says Gan.
Gan believes it will shift the mindset of SMEs nationwide to tag along with the rest of fellow SMEs in supporting each other and co-exist in the industry. “It’ll make a great difference knowing that you have all the help within your own community members but first you need to acknowledge one another in order to help you on your journey,” he adds.
Keeping this idea in mind, the fourth series featured a prominent line-up of speakers comprising local community builders who have excelled in their own fields. Apart from Gan himself, the speakers also include Qu-Exchange founder and CEO Mr. Wayne Lim, Common Ground country head Ms. Yvonne Lee, UNIFI General Manager for the SME segment Mr. Shahril Effendi Jaafar and BNI Malaysia National Director Mr. Marcus Hwang.
According to Gan, each speaker has their own sole insights to share with the audience at the event. Together, they make up a complete ecosystem that covers holistic topics revolving on methods to overcome challenges and obstacles while growing the business at the same time.
“MSMEs have the tendency to become too dependent on large and profitable clients or projects, causing great losses whenever the clients back out on a deal or if a project does not go through,” said Gan. “Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) should look towards working together rather than seek to work with the big players in the hope of hitting pay dirt,” Gan added.
That’s usually the beginning of a tragedy for an MSME because their life and business are solely dependent on one person, namely the business owner. Rather, he believes, MSMEs should focus their attention on working together with other smaller businesses in the industry.
“In today’s tough business environment, going at it alone is no longer possible,” he commented. Thus he advocates for MSME business owners to consider working together with other business owners from the MSME community. “The opportunity within the MSME community is awfully a lot, you just have to take the first step and work with them.”
Gan encouraged MSMEs to chase after partnerships and projects with other MSMEs themselves, considering that they make up to over 90% of the businesses in Malaysia. He admits it will be a tougher challenge because it will take more MSMEs to take the place of one huge client or project. However, the level of risk that businesses face is smaller and less damaging as well.
“I believe that MSMEs possess an important aspect that most of us have forgotten. Since they’re already in the same boat, they are more flexible compared to multinational companies (MNCs). They are able to make decisions faster, which will allow them to grow faster as well,” Gan pointed out.
The fourth series attracted 400 attendees of its year compared to 300 pax the previous year and Gan believes that such an event will greatly benefit startups, emerging entrepreneurs in need of new ideas to overcome dilemmas and also owners of traditional businesses with the desire to transform.
There are just too many inspirational stories out there. “Everybody is looking to become someone unique but what they don’t realise is that in order to be unique, you first have to be normal,” Gan comments. “I believe they have to understand the basics before they move forward; most of them just go and start something.
However, Gan soon realised that not all of the inspirational stories are useful for the audience, especially for those with micro businesses. “Everyone goes through a different journey while running their businesses and may not be able to imitate or follow a speaker’s advice to reach success. That is what I felt the market was lacking,” Gan notes.
The Department of Statistics shows there are 907,065 or about 98.5% of total business establishments in the whole country are MSMEs as of 2016.
Out of that figure, 89.2% of MSMEs are in the services sector. Contributing to approximately 40% to Malaysia’s GDP and with the sector employing 65% of the total number of workforce.
It was also reported that the government expects the contribution from the MSMEs to the country’s GDP to exceed 50% in 2030.
Gan explained that the biggest problem with business owners is that they don’t recognise that they have a problem. “When they are not hungry, they will not go out and hunt for food and the problem with them is that they are in a comfort zone where they believe they are doing okay, even when they are in deficit with low sales and they think they are still doing okay,”
Gan added that this is quite prevalent especially among the start-ups as they do not rely on the business for their next meal or their future, “The family are loaded, they have their parents to support them, so even if they have a company that is not making money, it is fine. This type of mentality is the problem with the start-ups, especially the young start-ups,” he says.
“In an MSME community, everybody is a business owner, talking to these people is far better than going to school or getting an MBA,” said Gan.
He became determined to start organising events that encourage discussions with the objective to provide the audience with feasible and workable solutions.
“I want attendees to be able to understand the potential of the solutions that are being discussed during the event and immediately apply them to their respective businesses. That has always been my priority,” he elaborated on his point.
With this vision, Gan strives to customise SMEAS every year to become as relevant as possible and act as a platform for MSMEs to review and resolve the fundamental issues of their businesses.
Supporting partners for the fourth series are UNIFI, Malaysia SME® Media Group, Wondrous Event & Exhibition Sdn Bhd, Common Ground, Qu Exchange, INTI International University & Colleges, BNI Malaysia, Royale Demure, ICSMEE (International Council for SME & Entrepreneurship), Kakitangan.com and PichaEats.
In hoping to make a difference in the SME globe-sphere, Gan reached out to SMEs out there to join hand in hand to aim big in the ever-changing business industry. As the famous one-liner says if you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together.