Invested over US$22.4 million in R&D and deals since 2004Being an innovator is tough. Being an innovator in a market that is sceptical of home grown innovation can be brutal. Being an innovator in technology in a sceptical market is almost a mission impossible.Liew Choon Lian, the low key founder and Group CEO of Internet of Things specialists, MDT Innovations Sdn Bhd , faced this when his first product, an RFID module backed by two patents, struggled to get traction in the Malaysian market.
“Malaysia is a non-market for us, I used to say back then,” says Liew who splits his time between Japan and Malaysia. He still says that today. MDTI hit US$77.7 million revenue in 2022 with only 5% coming from Malaysia.Innovation never the challenge , rather hardware focuses business model was The solution was to become an end-to-end full-fledged IoT player instead of just an RFID company. This transition started in 2016. From developing intelligent wireless sensors to offering IoT as a service and data analytics, Liew, his right hand man, Sim Hon Wai and engineers at MDTi are now making waves in the US$46 billion smart sensor market with Asia accounting for a sizable“The market started taking us more seriously as well,” notes Liew.
“I was very popular with the Malaysian students then as I would pay for meals wherever we got together,” he recalled, laughing. It was in the late 1990s that Liew came into the radar of the late Othman Yeop, the first Chairman of Multimedia Development Corporation who was using the launch of the Multimedia Super Corridor to excite and convince top Malaysian talent residing overseas to return to Malaysia and help build the country’s technology capabilities.
Dubbed as the"Linotag connected apparel," Liew explains that this cutting-edge IoT design uses a special kind of yarn as a wireless antenna that can withstand repeated high temperature washing. Hit badly during Covid-19 pandemic with delays in chipset delivery, project postponements by clients, and facing difficulty in receiving payments, MDTI charted a new path by creating an ecosystem consisting of logistics and inventory management that would enable easy tracking and tracing of linen items for the healthcare and hospitality sectors - enter the LMS.
The sales strategy is not to go direct but partner with a party already entrenched in the hotel business. In Indonesia, MDT has partnered with the Hermina Hospital Group, and currently, 28 hospitals have adopted the system, with plans to add 50 more hospitals.
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