Digerati50: Taking on the world from Melaka
Digital News Asia (DNA) keeps a weekly collection that profiles the top 50 influencers, movers and shakers who are assisting shape Malaysia’s Digital Economy. These articles are from Digerati50, a special print guide launched in January 2014. For information on customised reprints of Digerati50, electronic mail [email protected].
- Has constructed a world-class hi-tech organisation out of Malaysia
- Too few E&E capabilities have guts to be entrepreneurs, he laments
BUILDING a world-class, excessive-tech startup isn’t easy, but it isn’t not possible both – just ask Dr Gabriel Walter (percent above) of optical electronics enterprise Quantum Electro Opto Systems Sdn Bhd (QEOS).
Having lived, breathed, and acted via the chant that ‘nothing is impossible’ for the beyond 5-and-a-half of-years, the cofounder of QEOS believes that his organization might be an answer to the question of whether a global-class, generation-extensive startup company primarily based in Malaysia can improve substantial investment, continue to exist and grow in valuation.
QEOS is an optical innovations corporation that has developed leap forward technology for the design and high-quantity manufacturing of multi-gigabit-consistent with-2d, high performance, low-cost and strength-efficient optical solutions.
The homegrown agency is placed in Melaka, with operations in Cupertino, California within the coronary heart of Silicon Valley.
The company says its products are used in everything from optical multimedia gadgets, audio/ video programs, and numerous IT packages within the purchaser, residential and business markets.
QEOS was born out of studies that Gabriel and other world-renowned researchers in this subject commenced project in 2003: Prof Dr Nick Holonyak and Prof Dr Milton Feng of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dr Holonyak is also the John Bardeen chair professor of electrical and laptop engineering and physics on the university, and Gabriel’s mentor, co-inventor and cofounder of QEOS. He is likewise one of the most illustrious scientists in the area of transistor research in the United States.
“Our survival and extraordinary growth for the past 5-and-a-1/2 years communicate strongly approximately Malaysia’s funding and financial help ecosystems, technical manpower availability and assisting
infrastructure, which includes providers and offerings,” says Gabriel, the 36-year-vintage Sarawakian-born engineer-cum-entrepreneur.
Armed with a furnish of beneath RM5 million (US$1.6 million) with the aid of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Gabriel convinced his fellow researchers to installation shop in Melaka in May 2008.
Asked whether Malaysia has the chops to succeed in such a high-tech, manufacturing-primarily based enterprise, Gabriel remains positive as he believes that the state is blessed with a amazing financial system wherein the unemployment price is low and the Government is centered on building a knowledge financial system.
He additionally says Malaysia has a sturdy pool of technical people within the E&E sector, however laments the reality that most of these capabilities “lack the center or consciousness to be real marketers.”
“It takes a certain kind of leadership to convert a organization from a production, supplier or distributor into a competitive technology enterprise,” he says. “The Government is doing its part, but it’s as much as the personal entities to take in the challenge, and QEOS is trying to make contributions to this by setting a sturdy example of success.”
Gabriel additionally believes that for a high-tech business like his to continue to exist, the business plans he and his cofounders have devised will have to continually be bendy.
“As lengthy because the point of origin and the stop aim for our organization is the equal, our plan need to be allowed to be bendy in between. Changing variables in reality consequences in better execution of the plan.
“For QEOS, the beginning factor changed into our Tilted Charge Dynamic Technology and the quit factor was to generate excessive cost for our Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio by demonstrating to the market that the era has matured.
“Over the years, we have modified our business plan based totally on the available ability units, studies outcomes and instances. The path taken was longer, however we did develop in valuation because of the better execution of the plan, and this ensures that the organization is still funded.”
As to the one lesson learnt under his mentor [Nick] Holonyak, Gabriel says, “Nick has skilled me to ‘usually use what I have, now not what I want,’ for this reason enabling me to expect the outcome of my work before doing the paintings itself.
“The finest venture for me then is to understand what I even have, within the Malaysian surroundings,” he says.
[Update: Last week, QEOS announced it had received Silicon Valley-based totally Centric Technologies LLC's IP belongings and those in a US$forty-million (RM129-million) deal; it also introduced its goal to be a leader inside the Internet of Things space.]