About Me

I am Koh Kian Hua, the brand founder of Malaysia’s first original Ojisang Convenience Seasoning.

In 1998, I went to Japan to study business administration at Asia University in Tokyo. As I had the experience of studying abroad in Japan, after graduation, I was recruited by a Japanese company, and working in Japan has always been my dream.

Japanese-funded enterprises are rigorous, conscientious, and have a strong sense of responsibility. Each task has a detailed completion plan which significantly improves work efficiency and goals. In the perspective of most foreign-funded companies, rigorous and well-regulated Japanese-based companies are something unique.

After working hard in the job for more than 15 years, I thought I would be staying until retirement. After all, the desirable thing about Japanese companies is that they rarely fire their employees. Their employee management system includes lifetime employment and progressive internal training. What I didn’t expect was that in 2019, I would quit my job with its stable income and boldly leap into the sea of business!

Perhaps due to the experiences of studying abroad in Japan and working in a Japanese company, I especially like Japanese culture. So when I started my seasoning brand, I naturally used the Japanese pronunciation of Ojisang as the brand name. Besides, Ojisan in Japanese means “middle-aged uncle.” At this moment, I am an uncle, a middle-aged uncle, who is working hard and struggling on the road to entrepreneurship!

Many people ask me, why would I invest in the food industry? I want to ask a more relevant question. What are the reasons that drive a person to start a business? I thought about it and summarized these reasons into the following 3 points.

• A high-quality production operations and control system
• Up to 15 years of work experience domestically and abroad
• The fast-growing convenience food field

Japanese has always been paying great attention to health awareness, and the food that is selling as a healthy product will easily attract the customer. In 2013, Japanese cuisine was recognized as one of the intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. In addition to reflecting the four seasons and Japan’s land, Japanese cuisine is characterized by a balanced and healthy diet, resulting in a long life.

When I worked in a Japanese company, I was responsible for sales, production, and quality control for a long time. At that time, I went abroad to work and treated it as a matter of course. Although I was busy at work day and night, it gave me an excellent opportunity to learn. I believe that my more than 15 years of industry experience, technological innovation, and business operation capabilities are the most robust and most potent capital for me to start a business. Japan’s food-conscious culture has confirmed my determination to enter the food industry.

On the other hand, curiosity and seeking knowledge are also vital. After returning to Malaysia from Japan, I found that people’s lifestyle and income levels have continuously increased the demand for convenience foods and healthy foods in Malaysia. The export rate of processed foods is also growing well, and overseas markets are expanding.

When I checked some information, the data either directly or indirectly reflected the potential development of the food industry:

1. According to the Asian Development Outlook Update Report released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in December 2020, Malaysia is estimated to have a 7 percent growth in 2021.
2. According to the International Monetary Fund, Malaysia’s per capita purchasing power parity in 2021 is US$29,600, and the number is expected to reach US$37,700 by 2025.
3. According to Malaysian labor force data, as of October last year, the number of employed has risen for five consecutive months, rising by 0.1 percent month-on-month to 15.21 million.
4. According to Malaysia’s e-commerce analysis data of the Global Web Index in 2019, over 26 million Malaysians now use the Internet, and 80 percent of users between the ages of 16 and 64 have already shopped online, becoming the second-fastest growing country in online sales.

I have always wanted to successfully integrate Japanese food and Japanese health concepts into Malaysians’ daily lives — one of my greatest hope and the ultimate goal of starting this business.

Due to the development of the times, the pace of people’s lives has gotten faster, and patterns and concepts of consumption have undergone tremendous change. So, I started thinking about people’s most basic food, clothing, housing, and transportation needs and found that a single food seasoning can not meet current consumption needs. Based on the markets of overseas countries, the contemporary seasoning brands and categories are pretty diverse. In contrast, Malaysia still has a lot of room for development and growth in this regard.

It is also essential to start with products that consumers want, buy, or find. People nowadays are looking ahead for the quality of life. Most consumers consider such things as peace of mind, safety, taste, health, low-calorie, and low-sugar when they go shopping for food and seek out products that focus on health, that are organic and are superfoods. The market favors such products.

On the other hand, the proportion of double-income families in our country is increasing. Nowadays, most are small families, and many people remain single. Therefore, for this large consumer group, sometimes low prices are no longer their primary consideration. They are focused more on the convenience and functionality of food.

Different types of consumers welcome products such as convenience foods or seasonings that do not need a long time to cook but can be heated and served immediately. Compound seasoning is helpful to solve the mismatch between young people’s cooking needs and technology.

Ojisang Convenience Seasoning is a product that has been born for the market with the above factors in mind. It can also sprinkle foods to dip the seasoning powder used to cook and fry food or food directly into it. Its unique feature is that people can also spread it on cooked food and the seasoning used for marinating ingredients, cooking, and frying. Season to taste, or dip and eat.

In product testing and packaging, all our seasoning powders are produced through high-precision and high-sensitivity metal foreign body detection. Regardless of cost, we use glass jars made of strong wear-resistant lead-free soda glass (which is also the glass used in baby bottles) that is environmentally friendly, hygienic, and safe to eat the seasoning with confidence.

It has just been 20 months since Ojisang Convenience Seasoning was launched on the market in October 2019, and it has already be used by more than 15,000 households and has achieved sales from 0 to 800,000.

Our brand has had almost immediate success in e-commerce. In addition to cultivating our online platforms, accelerating penetration in the C-end market, and further consolidating brand power and customer transaction rates, we are also optimistic about the continued expansion of space in the industry under the resonance of the B-end and C-end markets. Enriching the product line and expanding to the B-end market is one of our following plans.

I believe that everyone who is starting a business hopes to create a bright future through their hard work. However, in the internet age today, when the global economy is almost integrated, entrepreneurs who rely solely on themselves will eventually be eliminated by the times. Choosing a good business model is equivalent to giving yourself wings to take off.

For us at this stage, the most important thing is development, and we must accelerate the pace of it! If we lack sufficient funds, we can only go slowly. Still, we believe that with the continuous improvement in living standards over the next five years, the demand for convenience food will increase year on year, so the prospects are pretty broad.

We do not intend to slow down our development speed, so we hope to raise funds from the public through the Mystartr crowdfunding platform. We will provide investors with the most reasonable equity allocation and the most reasonable rate of return on investment. In the future, the fund allocation ratio will be 50 percent for product and technology research and development, 30 percent for brand promotion and marketing, and 20 percent for team growth and training.

Our vision is to lead a healthy life and a happy kitchen lifestyle; we are committed to promoting healthy eating and happy cooking as part of a fast-paced life. It is our mission. We hope to do this together with you!

 Term Sheet

Management Team

Pitch Deck