Malaysian firm behind Causeway 'smiley' buses rides to an IPO

Transport venture was started out of a sense of public service, says businessman

- Cheong Poh Kwan

The bright yellow Causeway Link (CW) buses that move thousands of people across Johor and Singapore daily are known for the smiley faces plastered on their facade, but their origin story wasn't quite as cheery.

Back in the early 2000s, Malaysian businessman Lim Han Weng frequently commuted across the Causeway to oversee his trucking and bus assembly businesses on both sides. He would sometimes join long, snaking queues of exhausted commuters at Kranji MRT station in the evening, waiting for hours for the non-air-conditioned SBS Transit service 170 buses to get them home to Johor.

A former car salesman turned logistics entrepreneur, Mr Lim, who is also a Singapore permanent resident, saw both a business opportunity and a pressing problem. Determined to ease commuter woes, he approached the Malaysian authorities and managed to secure a licence to offer cross-border rides—but only up till the Causeway.

Then in 2002, he went to Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) armed with photos of winding queues and first-hand accounts from frustrated commuters to make his case. But it took more than a year of persistent lobbying, including meetings with then Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong and then Trade and Industry Minister George Yeo, and a promise to LTA that he would not use "broken buses" in Singapore to finally receive the licence.

That made his company, Handal Indah, the first Malaysian operator approved to run cross-border bus rides.

In March 2025, this same company that started with a small fleet of CW buses two decades ago went public on Bursa Malaysia as HI Mobility. Its initial public offering (IPO) saw strong investor interest, with the public tranche oversubscribed 6.6 times. Its market capitalisation stood at around RM630 million (S$192 million) as at June 2.