Kota Kinabalu: The Windows to the World 2: International Conference and Exhibition on Entrepreneurship 2013 (ICEE 2013) managed to rake in a total of RM103,638 in sales after only two days."Our benchmark is the first such expo which was held in KL Sentral earlier this year where we managed to get RM50,000 in three days.
Our aim was to get about 20 per cent more than that.
"We are grateful for the generosity of the people here who have supported our entrepreneurs and we hope we would be able to improve this figure by the end of this expo on Monday," said MARA Deputy Director General Dato' Hanisah Omar in her opening speech during the closing ceremony of the expo here on Saturday.
The expo, organised by Mara and Universiti Malaysia Sabah, managed to attract 48 exhibitors involving almost 500 Mara entrepreneurs from all over the country. It aims to empower Bumiputera entrepreneurs towards achieving internationally renowned enterprises.
Hanisah also revealed that during the course of two days from Oct 30 to 31, a total of 4,145 inquiries were made by members of the public or interested potential business partners to the exhibitors.
"Out of these, a total of 154 business networking were successfully established with a total value of RM931,300 and the number is increasing," she said.
She also praised the commitment shown by the participating entrepreneurs and encouraged more Bumiputera entrepreneurs to take part in such expo in the future.
"The organisation of programmes such as these will help entrepreneurs in cutting marketing and promotion costs as well as overhead cost between 15 and 30 per cent. We also expect the demands for goods from the peninsula into Borneo would increase threefold," she said.
Other than exhibition, Mara also organised conferences, business matching, talks by successful entrepreneurs and forums throughout the expo.
Meanwhile, Mara Council Member Datuk Dr Yusof Yacob urged Bumiputera entrepreneurs to get out of their comfort zones and explore ways to continuously expand their businesses and aim towards global market.
"The Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, had outlined hundreds of business fields that Bumiputera entrepreneurs could get into. Mara will always support the people in terms of training, financial resources and consultancy.
"It is also a good idea to learn from the non-Bumiputera entrepreneurs, especially on money management and how they managed to build their businesses up," he said.
Yusof later witnessed the presentation of letter of intent to entrepreneur Fazillah Mokti from Amaryllis Wellness Sdn Bhd Managing Director Ahmad Aizudin Ahmad Anuar where Amaryllis will be appointing Fazillah as the distributor for its Amaryllis Premium Collagen product for the whole of Sabah.
