FACULTY : TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT &

TECHNOPRENEURSHIP (FPTT)

TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP
UNIVERSITI TEKNIKAL MALAYSIA MELAKA

BTMW4012
SEMESTER 1
SESSION 2016/2017
ASSIGNMENT : ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROFILING
DATE OF SUBMISSION
2 NOVEMBER 2016
NAME OF GROUP MEMBERS & MATRIX NUMBER

IDA NURFARHANA BINTI MARZUKHE B071410341

NAME OF LECTURER
DR SENTOT IMAM WAHJONO
CHECK LIST:
ITEMS MARKS TICK ( / )
Introduction
Pengenalan 2
Answer for the Questions/Content
Jawapan kepada Soalan /Kandungan 8
Conclusion
Kesimpulan 4
Writing mechanics
Mekanisma penulisan 2
Appendices & Evidence
Lampiran & Bukti 4

LECTURER SIGN & STAMP

DATE:

TOTAL MARKS

1
Name of Company/Business

Name of Entrepreneur
EN SYAFIQ YUNOS

Students Contact No:

012- 7535510

Total Page
8 pages

2
 UNIVERSITI TEKNIKAL MALAYSIA MELAKA (UTeM)
SEMESTER I SESSION 2015/ 2016
BTMW 4012
ENTREPRENEURSHIP TECHNOLOGY

ENTREPRENEURIAL PROFILING

INTRODUCTION
PENDAHULUAN

Name of Entrepreneur : Ahmad Syafiq B Mohd Yunos

Age : 25
Company : SelambaJer
Residence : Melaka, Malaysia
Citizenship : Malaysia
Marital Status : Single
Education : Master in Manufacturing (Quality Control),
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Durian Tunggal, Melaka

ANSWER FOR THE QUESTIONS

1. Can you please introduce yourself?

Thank you for inviting me for this interview session. My name is Ahmad Syafiq. I am
from Johor and I have been living in Malacca for almost6 years. So far, what I did here
is I have actually involving in a small business. It may look nothing but I am already
doing this business for three (3) years. What I do is I am offering a service business or
transportation service or locally known as kereta sewa. Seems like it is an easy job but
this is a risky and challenging business for me to deal with. I tried to face all the
challenges and finally now I managed to keep my business even though it is small
comparing to other successful company in transportation services. I am happy as long
as I can live comfortably.

2. How did you manage to spot the idea? How did it surface?

The idea comes from my own perspectives and views. I loved doing business since I
was still in school. I did small business which is prepaid recharging services. There was
a time when prepaid top-up was so popular and there are percentages of the profit we
gain. Although it is not as much but what makes me go on to do the service because
people demands. Before I came to Malacca to study, I also involved in food business.
My business back then more focuses on a drinking product which I sold at night
markets and bazaar. At the moment, I was in my degree when I stop doing all my
business in Malacca. After a year of doing nothing, I start to feel bored. When you heart
into business, you start to find opportunities and chances to make money. Thats when I
came up with an idea to make transportation services as I think it is a potential business
to make. Next, I start with buying a car, a Kancil to be exact. The car cost me about RM
6000 at that time. I started my business immediately after that. I started to learn how to
make this transportation services.

3. How much capital (seed money) did it take to start-up your business?

My capital seed was RM6 500 when I purchased a car back then. I bought the car and
made cash payment without any debt from the bank after few difficulties I encountered.
After few months of doing this business I start to see there are big potential for this
business to go bigger. At first, I was just buying the car to try out this business. But
after that I bought my second car, Viva, using loans from the bank to buy a brand new
Viva. I wanted to add more cars for my business but instead i did some research and
think how I can get more cars without making any loans. I bought a car once so I have
high commitment with the bank that is the reason why I did not managed to purchase
any more cars. I made an advertisement for my company to find cars. After 3 months of
purchasing the car, I found someone volunteered to put his car to the business. I called
him as pemajak or car leasing. They are willing to lease their car. It was a brand new
Proton Saga FLX. Within a year, it was great. I only ran the business by using these
three cars for that time and it was enough for me. So many things I learned at that time.
On the second years, there are so many people leasing their cars. I have eight (8) cars
and still stick with the number until now. Officially started my business on August
2013.

4. How long did it take to reach positive cash flow and break-even sales volume?
Capital seed for transportation service is not too high but it will be when something
happen. This is why I said the business is risky. In my experience, the usual issues arise
are car breakdown. The lifetime of the car itself is one of the reason why accidents
happen. Losing cars also one of the risk. Doing this business the margin is not big. But
if you want to get 200% profit it is possible. For an example, if we make bank loans for
about RM50k including the interest. The time to reach positive cash flow estimated
around 5 years. In 5 years we can gain around 70k to 80k. But it depends on our
marketing and our target customer. We are not actually approved all customer to use our
service. As this is a high risk business, we need to be careful and filtered the request to
use our service. We do not know what customer would do with our cars. When we do
the right marketing to the right customer target, we will get the right customer for our
business. By that we mean customers who are not give us many troubles, discipline and
more responsible towards the cars.

5. How many workers do you have at the moment?

For this 3 years there are not many people working for me. Officially there was only
one person working for me. He was the one who make the delivery for customers and
handle the booking. It is an easy task to do. When there are request from customers, he
will book the car from me and make the delivery to the customer. He will also manage
the car back during the returning back process from the customer. Recently I am
looking for a new staff to look out for my companys account. Before this, I did my
marketing, accounting and financial on my own. Doing all the jobs from all department
start to give me hard times thats why I need assistant now. So for now I have two staff
working with me.

6. Do you have a role model? Who inspires you? The specific influence or impact
he/she had on you.

Role model is a subjective thing. What I look into a role model is his characteristic. It
does not matter whether he is an entrepreneur or not. My role model that I very adore
the most is Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. I like how the way he thinks. What he did to
our country is something we can be proud of. Generally we can obviously see how he
managed to rules Malaysia. There are many achievements in terms of infrastructure and
technologies upgraded shows us the way he see things. I once borrowed Dr Mahathir
biography from my friend, I read the book. I respect the way he explain things and his
way of writing. I tried to understand his experiences and follow his achievements. I
wanted to be like him, by that I mean to do good things like he did. I took all the good
things and try to applied to my business.
7. Do you have your family members who are involved in entrepreneurship/business?
(spouse/father/uncle/grandfather,etc). How would you successfully hand your
business over to a family member, including choosing a successor, transferring
ownership and management?

There is no family members involve in transportation services. I started this business by

myself from zero scratch. I did all this by myself. What I did is networking. Malacca is
one of the states with high demand of car rental. In the future, we have discussed on to
open up cooperation for car rentals in Malacca. We need a good networking to run this
business. For example if there are accidents or issues involving customers attitude, we
will discuss about this matter amongst ourselves and try to overcome problems
together. Especially when there are cars lost. So my networking in this business is just
my friends who also involve in this business. My mother is also doing business in hair
dressing after my late father retired from government job. My mother runs a saloon
which has spa, sauna and facial treatment for the customers to enjoy. And the saloon is
especially for women only. The saloon located at our house.

8. What were your goals in this business?

My goal is the business more focuses on transportation services. Car rental have high
possibility and potential to success if you do it. If you see in Malaysia, car rental
business has bureaucracy in term of requesting the licenses and risk. My target in this
business I would like to open a bigger company with license (Sdn Bhd) that involve in
tourism.

9. What do you think it needs for someone to be an entrepreneur?

The most important thing in this field is that you have to be brave. Not just brave, you
have to have passion, desire to learn and do research for the particular business. After
that you might want to find someone who already doing the business to learn from him.
Secondly, you need to learn how to do marketing. It doesnt matter in what business
you want to do next, it is all about marketing. It is easier for us to do marketing now as
all people now have smartphones. As for me, I put advertisement in Google, Facebook
and also Instagram to promote my business. Those are the best platforms to do
marketing. As for me for example, I tell people about what cars available, services that
offered and the specifications of the car. The marketing is not only on the internet and
social media, I am also do marketing at hotels which I send quotation to several hotels
in Malacca. Which if any of the customers want to use rental cars, they will give our
contact number to their customer. Next, we also need to be physically and mentally
prepared to be entrepreneur. We have to face ups and down as we do business. At some
moment you might fail until you feel like you want to quit. Do not ever give up. As for
me, I made a mistake which I start the business before I do the marketing. My advice
for people who want to do business, find something that you want, and try to make a
marketing strategies. For example, firstly look how many people already do the
business you want to make. Secondly, find something that would differentiate your
business and other people services. As for the price, it is universal. If you pay more,
you get more. And if you pay less, you will get less for the service. But the root to all of
it is your own marketing.
10. What critical lessons have you learnt from the successes and failures (if any) from
the businesses that you create?

There are so many things happen while Im doing this car rental services. First is
accidents occurs and also robbery of the cars. I faced it myself before. The incidents
happened is actually very precious. If you understand what Im trying to say is, with all
the incidents happened its actually make me better and improve my business. When
you facing all the troubles, we will be a bit down. Plus there also when the car broke
down while customer using it. With all the times, cost, effort and energy wasted it make
me feels down sometimes. Back then, I was happy if these things would happen.
Because after sometimes, it makes me realize that it was a good lesson to learn from. If
you working, if you want to get experience is when you work for a company for a
certain times. But for business, what troubles happened is what your experiences are. If
someone asks me what my experiences, I can tell what I gain all this time. I can tell the
details. For example, Im not only handling the car renting only. I need to settle the
insurance for the car, maintenance for the car which you need to know inside and out of
the car you handling specifically. I have three panel workshops for my cars. One is for
the maintenance, one for the accessories and one for the body car kit.
CONCLUSION

Based on the interview held with Encik Syafiq, I see that he is a very young and
ambitious entrepreneur that always fined opportunities to make his business bigger. He also
managed his time between his studies and working.

It can be conclude that what you need to be an entrepreneur is that you need to be
brave and have passion for the business that you want to do. You also need to do research
for the business you desire to do as it will help you in the future. Next, you need to figure
out the capital money that you need to open up a business. Although it easier to make loans
from bank, it is better to start a business with you savings for the first time. Besides that,
you need to have clear vision of your business and have goals to always improve. Do
research on the target market and do not afraid to seek for opportunities. In addition, you
need to be physically and mentally prepared of what you might face next. Lastly, you need
to do good marketing strategy as it is the most important in a business.

APPENDIX
http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2642-entrepreneurship.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brettnelson/2012/06/05/the-real-definition-of-
entrepreneur-and-why-it-matters/
http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-an-entrepreneur-definition-characteristics-
examples.html