Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Economic Advisory Council (SEAC) held a Meet and Greet Dialogue Session with more than 100 successful young business and industry leaders at Menara Kinabalu, here, Wednesday.
With the participation of young entrepreneurs from a wide range of fields such as tourism, architecture, construction, healthcare, agriculture and renewable energy, among others, the room was abuzz with discussions on ways Sabah and its industries can leap forward.
SEAC member Datuk John Lo presented a briefing on the State Government’s current and future plans to develop a robust future economy for Sabah, which include restructuring industries such as oil and gas and downstream manufacturing, among others.
John had also stressed the importance of developing a policy that can groom young Sabahan economic leaders who are instrumental to the successful implementation of the Government’s long-term economic plans.
As such, the Sabah Young Business and Industry Leaders (Sybil) network was formed to mobilise young economic leaders to partner with the Government and achieve objectives, led by Architect James Wong Kein Peng.
James said such a platform was crucial to allow bright young business and industry leaders who are already running successful organisations to voice and share their innovative ideas and help the Government build a stronger future economy in the long term.
Among Sybil industry leaders present was Amazing Borneo Tours & Events Sdn Bhd Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and SabahTravel.com Founder Kenji Yeo who specialises in the inbound tourism industry.
“We conduct all inbound tour operations, including jungle trekking, mountain climbing, diving and MICE events as well,” he told Daily Express after the meet and greet session.
With vast decade-long experience in the industry, Kenji stressed the need for Sabah to have a consolidated platform where those who want to visit Sabah can book their accommodations, car rentals and other travel plans in one place.
Towards this initiative, Kenji has been developing SabahTravel.com, Sabah’s first B2B2C multi-tour operator platform which aims to expose Sabah’s tour and service operators to the global market.
“It is a platform that allows all operators, even our competitors and tourism related business trade, to put their products on the website. It is like a Shopee for tourism.
“We have spent four years developing SabahTravel.com and invested more than RM9 million into this, just for the sake of Sabah,” he said.
On the Sybil platform, Kenji said it provides the opportunity to understand other industries and exchange valuable data and research findings that may help each industry face their unique challenges.
Another entrepreneur present was Precilla Fong, founder of Ooze, a community-based organisation that provides entrepreneurship education for kids and teenagers.
A flagship programme of Ooze are its pitching competitions where teenagers are trained by professionals on design thinking, business models and pitching, with local industry experts being judges of the competition.
Precilla believes that attracting investments into Sabah starts with better education and developing talents from a young age.
She said Ooze is currently funded by the State Government through the Industrial Development and Entrepreneurship Ministry.
“The Government can help more by growing Sybil to a bigger scale and we as the grassroots community can join and grow from there. Sybil is a very good platform for us as we need to expand our network,” she said.
For Sabah’s healthcare industry, Dr Mohammad Farid, Founder and CEO of Family Care Clinic believes that Sabah should tap into medical tourism.
“If we develop medical tourism, it will bring up the status of the country. People would come here for cutting-edge medical treatment. So Sabah will not be less than anywhere else, we will be as advanced. We can be on par with Singapore,” he said.
Dr Farid also believes that Sabah should ensure its autonomy over healthcare in order to provide quality, accessible and affordable healthcare to Sabahans, while also adopting new technology to propel the industry forward.
