From unicorn to ashes; and a new beginning 

We tried settling down in the San Francisco Bay Area, but by 2000 we realized Malaysia was still home. It was for this reason that my wife returned home to give birth to our first child that year. 

This decision meant monthly travel between the United States and China, then Kuala Lumpur, as I attended to our various business initiatives and spent time at home. Though it was grueling, we believed Malaysia, as an emerging tiger of Asia, would be the best place to raise our children. 

The people who made it possible 

Green Packet was founded in 2000 to provide technology and software solutions, later expanding into the broadband business. The team in those early days was small, consisting of just a handful of employees writing code in a rented office. 

I’ve been fortunate to be able to convince some top-notch talent to join us. One of the first was a brilliant mind pursuing his PhD in Computer Science at Harvard. We were introduced by a mutual friend, talked the entire night, and by dawn, I’d convinced him to join us as our engineering lead and fifth team member. 

Another moment underscored how our people were everything. I’ll never forget when the dot-com bubble burst in March 2000 with the collapse of many companies. I went for lunch with another engineer, a master’s student from China who had recently joined us. 

The situation was already tough then, and sitting in his car and chatting that day, he wondered aloud if he would lose his job given the market situation. This would mean losing his visa – and for him, the American Dream. Even though my co-founders and our CEO had already quit by then, his plaintive remark stirred something in me. 

Eventually, there was nothing left but the title for a property in Nanning, China; the product of years of work through the IBI group of companies. Nonetheless, I took out the title and told my team: “We’re not closing. I’ll sell the land.” I sold the land as promised, and every cent went to salaries. 

From that sacrifice, Green Packet was reborn. We rode out the challenging period, we grew, and we eventually listed on Bursa Malaysia in 2005. 

The end of an era 

Green Packet grew rapidly. Within two years of listing, the valuation crossed RM3.7 billion, becoming Malaysia’s first technology unicorn in 2007.  

We also went into telecommunications with Packet One Networks (P1), launching a commercial WiMAX service in August 2008 with SK Telecom and Intel. It was the first large-scale deployment of Mobile WiMAX in Southeast Asia, allowing ordinary Malaysians to stream and access high-speed Internet. 

Our “Sudah Potong?” (“Already cut?”) campaign sliced through the noise and became a pop culture symbol overnight. The message exhorting users to cut their cords and choose freedom by going wireless is still widely remembered and cited in Malaysian marketing case studies for its boldness and impact. 

Our success felt unstoppable, but the ground beneath our feet was already shifting. 

Everything comes to an end. Though WiMAX had a real use case in Malaysia, it was dependent on technologies developed by other companies. When 4G LTE became widely adopted by telecommunication operators around the world, the writing was on the wall. By 2014, we sold P1 to Telekom Malaysia. I stayed on as CEO of webe digital until 2016. 

Losing everything, finding clarity 

After webe digital, I embarked on a retreat in the Himalayas. I returned home refreshed and founded G3 Global Berhad, focusing on AI and smart-city infrastructure. In 2019 we partnered with SenseTime and CHEC to build Malaysia’s first AI Park, which was to be our next act. Everything looked great and ready to take off.  

Then COVID hit us in 2020. Borders slammed shut overnight, markets turned, and the entire world simply slowed down. It was unprecedented. Devastating. 

It was in those two years that my body followed. Perpetual exhaustion turned into illness and visits to the hospital. For the first time in decades, I found myself unable to fix, build, or command anything like I’d always done. This time, when everything fell apart, all I could do was breathe. 

Yet as I lost everything, I gained in clarity. Slowly, I began to see the outline of a bridge forward. 

I still remember it vividly. One night in May 2024, I skipped my pills and fell soundly asleep for the first time in years. When I woke, my body felt lighter. I experienced the will to start again. That morning, I began to rebuild. The first spark of Aurion Group was born that day. 

I will share more about my vision for Aurion in the weeks and months to come.