Meet Farhan Khairol Anuar, CEO & Founder of Products2U

Disruptr:  Farhan Khairol Anuar. CEO & Founder

Share with us on what you do and what inspired you to start the business.

  • We aim to bring online commerce to the underserved offline mom and pop stores and community.
  • We go down to the ground level and visit kampung stores, mini marts and mom and pops to help them sell goods and services beyond their existing inventory, without involving any upfront inventory purchase.
  • For example, with our app – Mak Cik Kiah who operates a small mini mart in Kg Terengganu selling basic sundry goods can now also sell (on consignment) perfumes, health and living products, cheap personal insurance and other brands demanded by our users from time to time, in addition to the marketing and point of sales support we provide.
  • We started on this journey just about a year ago in May 2021 when we realised we had an opportunity to help bridge the underserved offline market gap in Malaysia. For one, we knew that Malaysia’s mobile online commerce penetration was roughly at ~20%, which pales in comparison to countries such as Indonesia, UK and US who were already at 60-80% penetration rate. The same underserved market segment in Malaysia was also lacking in basic services offered such as health insurance, micro-financing, and access to digitalisation opportunities.
  • We embarked on the opportunity mainly leveraging on the resources, network and partners we had – starting from a 2-man team to provide settlement of bills, sales of prepaid and gaming credits to a 12-man team and expanding our product base to include physical goods on consignment with many more products and services in the works.
  • Since then, we had made significant progress in our traction and were able to secure some seed stage funding in Q3 2022, notably from Free Malaysia Today, and Nexea Venture Capital who have decided to back our idea and join our mission to help bring online commerce to the underserved communities.

What has the journey been like?

  • The journey has been very challenging yet extremely rewarding. We have come a long way since we started over a year ago with a long journey ahead of us still.

Biggest achievement and what is one regret that you wish you had or had not done?

  • Putting myself out there and risking it all to start a business/venture. I regret not taking the steps much earlier on, but I am a firm believer that “everything happens for a reason at perfect timing”

Where do you see yourself in the next 1 year?

  • Growing the company to 10-20x in sales, with a solid user base with an iterative product based always on what our user wants

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

  • Serial entrepreneur, either having partially exit the current venture or taking it to the next level and IPO listing, and ultimately contributing back to the business ecosystem which has given me so much

What keeps you going to keep running the business?

  • The challenge to make something people want, the desire and dream to build a company and start legacy

What is one local startup you would like to work together with and why?

  • Lapasar. I believe we have synergistic opportunities and I like the founders

Who is one founder (local or international) that you look up to?

  • Reid Hoffman

Why should investors invest in your startup?

  • We are going to be the next Malaysian unicorn and a key regional player. We have massive market potential and strong growth traction. We listen to our users, learn from our mistakes, and will never give up.

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