What according to you makes one a dynamic leader?
In the era of fourth industrial revolution, whereby, digital disruption is happening all the time, a dynamic leader should be able to agile enough to respond to the technological and business landscape. A person that willing to unlearn and relearn new things.
What led to the formation of FAVORIOT?
It was in the year 2016, when I visited Silicon Valley on a business trip with several Malaysian business delegation. The exposure and the meetings with several big companies and Startups opened the mindset of “anything is possible if we have a great vision.” FAVORIOT was officially formed in 2017 with the vision to help Senior Citizens who’s ageing at home to be monitored closely using wearable devices (IoT) and mobile applications.
What has the journey been like for Mazlan Abbas over the years? Looking back, what would you have done different when starting out?
Most of the times, technology is not the main obstacle to the adoption of the solution. It takes time for people to understand how technology like IoT can transform the way they conduct business or run their operations. FAVORIOT is one of the earliest IoT Startups in the country. We have tried building several solutions internally, but the effort is huge to cater for different customer needs. Finally, we realized that our strength is the IoT platform that we built which we have now offered to other ecosystem players. We could have captured the education market sector much earlier before we moved up the value chain to business or corporate customers.
What is the process followed by the company to ensure optimal client satisfaction?
Education through training and webinars will open the eyes and minds of the customers. We encouraged the customers to think big but start small to get the buy-in from their C-suite levels. Understanding their business case and pain problems are critical in the early stage to ensure no wastage of effort later. It will be followed up with integration to their legacy systems before scaling up the deployment. In the final stage, they will use enough data collected to create either new revenue streams, saves costs, create new business models, or gather better insights regarding their business.
What would be your advice for young and aspiring leaders or entrepreneurs?
Test your ideas early. Get feedback regarding your product and iterate until you get the product-market fit. Don’t be ashamed if the original ideas failed or not accepted.
What has been the biggest roadblock during your journey? What has been your biggest learning?
The biggest roadblock is getting the first few customers that trust your product and solutions. What we feel about our product might not be the same as what the customer sees. The biggest learning is all about getting the product-market fit as fast as possible.
Moving forward, what does the future look like for you and FAVORIOT?
The users of the FAVORIOT IoT platform started from less than 3 countries in 2017 and now has grown to 115 countries in 2021. We see the market for IoT has started to grow faster in the last 3 years due to the awareness and fusion of many technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Big Data Analytics, Robotics and Drones. In all IoT deployments, it will require some form of an IoT platform, and this is where FAVORIOT would like to excel – To IoTise all Businesses.
