GETTING MALAYSIANS BACK ON THEIR FEET AND INTO A JOB

Suthan Mookaiah had to close his tech office and retrench close to 10 staffs during the initial Movement Control Order last March when Covid-19 hit Malaysian shores. It did not stop there, he had to again execute a similar move for his personal project, where 10 staffs who worked in his restaurant were terminated.

- POOVENRAJ KANAGARAJ

“I always felt responsible for that, knowing that there were not many vacancies in the market at the time. I wanted to rehire them back in sound employment,” he told BusinessToday.

And so, he started BeliGas, a registered social enterprise with the SDG to get Malaysians back in the workforce. To date, BeliGas has hired over 40 people, mostly from the B40 segment who went jobless during the lockdown.

“The journey has been a roller coaster. We basically jumped into this industry with little knowledge and we had to learn or risk going down. We tested, we failed, and we pivoted aggressively. We had to initiate the best practices from tech industries in order to digitize the business,” he said.