“In my final year, and everyone sits for SPM, I made myself sick so that I can extend the papers to resit the exams.
After that happened, my dad kicked me out of my own house because he was so upset with me. I was not even 18 years old. So, I said, ‘ok, cool’ and I went to stay at my friend’s place.
It was only when I came back to the house, my mom opened the door for me and he told my mom not to. I realised he really meant it. I saw my sisters tearing up to help me, but my dad didn’t want to see me.
At that time, I was in UiTM. I had to struggle for a little then, working at 7-11 at night and selling ‘nasi lemak’ to my university mates to keep myself afloat. At that point of time, I realised how important studies are. I didn’t study when I was in high school, I’d copy someone or come up with my own thing and do barely enough just to make sure i pass.
If I could turn back time, I would appreciate studying because subjects such as history, accounting and Bahasa Malaysia could have made me learn faster with lesser mistakes. In business, if people did a mistake, you need to learn and think better, and do stuff differently to avoid that kind of mistake. People usually don’t see a value in reading and all these education including myself. Only when I realised that everyone is ahead of me, did I understand its importance.
After my diploma in UiTM, I found out that it wasn’t an easy thing to do for my dad when he kicked me out of the house. I reconciled with my dad after I graduated and made it up when I got a scholarship and went to Adelaide.
I wanted to make a come back so I did my whole degree in 2 and a half years instead of the usual 4 years. As I was finishing my business and finance degree in Australia, I worked there for about a year. After more than a year, I found out there are a lot more opportunities in Malaysia, especially in the financial sector. There were also not many players in the tech industry, as compared to the states.
I came back and opened my own tech investment fund, raised close to RM 2 million in less than 3 months. Back then I was working with Ashran (current CEO of MaGIC), and he was impressed. I went and looked at companies in the States where we could replicate in Malaysia, seeing if investors wanted it or not. We helped build 11 companies in that a year.
During that time, I met my other co-founder for Dropee. I came out of the company and we startedDropee.com from scratch.
And in that one year and nine months, we serviced 1,200 retailers and over 700 brands in the Klang Valley”.
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Aizat Rahim is the Co-Founder and COO of Dropee.
Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre(MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems!
Photostory by Christine Cheah
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa
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(This post was first published on October 26th 2018)
