Entrepreneurship RXB2203

Group Assignment

OPPORTUNITY ASSESSMENT PLAN

INTRODUCTION
We are a group of four entrepreneurs hereby present our opportunity analysis in the
objective of evaluating and identifying the opportunities for ten potential business ideas.
Our potential business ideas consisting Personal & Corporate Concierge Service, Maid
Services, Personalized Products & Services, Education Consultancy, Property Agency,
Eco-Tourism, Photography Studio, Business Hotel, Nighttime Operating Automobile
Service Centre, and Restaurant. An opportunity assessment plan is essential to ensure
our entrepreneurship skills, goals and objectives are aligned with success.

TEN (10) POTENTIAL BUSINESS IDEAS

Business Plan 1: Personal & Corporate Concierge Service

Personal & Corporate Concierge Service is an Assistant and Lifestyle Management
Team. People nowadays are mostly living in a hassle and packed with schedule of
things to do from business, work, family, kids, to friends and personal life. Our Personal
& Corporate Concierge Service will be able to lend a helping hand as an assistant and
lifestyle management team for those who need a PA at home as much as at work. We
assist corporates and individuals in developing a highly efficient team, that will help
manage their time effectively to maximize their abilities and produce results for their
companies and benefits of the individuals. In today’s competitive world, it is necessary
for companies to create a supportive workplace and provide excellent benefits for the
employees while maintain the delicate balance between their professional and personal
life.

We provide our services in sectors such as home & family, entertainment, errand
running, domestic, personal, travel and corporate. Our main focuses are on the
Corporate, Home & Family, and Entertainment side, which we believe these sections
can generate higher profits for the company. For the corporate people, we provide our
services by assisting them in planning meetings, coordinate event details and catering,
office cleaning, arrange business travel accommodations, personalized stationary,
courier services, virtual secretary services, secure temporary help for a short-staffed

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department and chauffeur and limousines services, etc. As for home & family, we assist
in finding workday care for a sick child, baby sitting and child minder services, maids and
butlers to attend your premises, arrange delivery of meals, food shopping, key holding
services, handyman services for household repairs, garden maintenance and children’s
entertainers etc. We are also able to provide assistant on the entertainment side such as
planning events or outdoor activities, restaurant reservations, entertaining foreign
guests, party and event organization, hotel weekend breaks, purchasing airline tickets,
or tickets to the cinema, music or sporting events, scheduling tea time for golf and
publicities. Our team is part of your team and considers your success our success.

Business Plan 2: Maid Services (Full Time/Part Time)

Cleaning is important, whether it be cleaning our home, our workplace, our environment
or even our desk. Cleaning promotes hygiene, keep us free from disease. It also
reduces respiratory problems by reducing dust in our surrounded environment. Speaking
about cleaning may sound all too easy but is everyone doing it, or able to do it
consistently, while there are so many daily things to fulfill as responsibilities and
commitments such as work and family? Parents that come home from work are often too
exhausted to bother about cleaning the house when making dinner and taking care of
the kids alone has already taken almost all their time in the night. Hiring maids in most of
the agencies in Kota Kinabalu may require expensive costs, long waits for foreign
domestic helpers and painful adjustment. With our services, people can now say
goodbye to all these difficulties and begin to live their lives as comfortable as they
wanted. With our Maid Services in Full Time and Part Time, employing domestic helpers
is just a phone call away. Also, we provide you with well-trained domestic helpers.

For as low as RM10 per hour*, you can have a maid to help you with tedious home
cleaning, office cleaning, baby sitting and other household chores. All our helpers have
completed intensive training at specialized training centers in house cleaning to ensure
they can be excellent in performing their duties. Our services are safely ensured as all
our helpers are professionally trained and trust worthy. Other than that, they are reliable,
flexible, affordable, and with instant service where helpers are readily available to
provide you with efficient services.

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Good news is that, we offer valuable packages as listen below, providing more options
for households in order to accommodate different kinds of needs:-
Package A Package B Package C Package D
RM150 RM180 RM200 RM230
4 times in a month 4 times in a month 6 times in a month 6 times in a month
3 hours per visit 4 hours per visit 3 hours per visit 4 hours per visit

We cover areas around Kota Kinabalu, from City Center, Likas, Inanam, Kolombong,
Lintas, Penampang, Donggongon, to as far as Putatan and Tuaran. We strive to create
more healthy homes so that everyone will be able to enjoy their life in better ways.

Business Plan 3: Personalized Products & Services

Special days of your loved ones are coming, you wanted to get them something special
and unique to make them feel special. You wanted to make something with your own
bare hands because by doing that, it means putting own effort and efforts represents
sincerity, but you are lack of the materials, equipment, suitable tools and even ideas of
what kind of gift you want to get for your loved ones, or even friends and families.
Getting all materials and tools you needed to produce the gift would cost you even more
than buying one straight from the stores. But you don’t want to buy something from a gift
store where there’s 500 pieces of identical ones either.

We will solve all these problems for you. Our business is to provide people the
advantages of making personalized products and services. We focus on sections such
as Wedding Gifts, Birthday Gifts & Cakes, Photography & Frames, Cards (Birthdays,
Anniversaries, Thank-You cards, etc.), and also T-Shirts. We are different from other
stores because customers can make their own gifts with their own designs, and we
provide all the tools and equipment, along with assistances if needed, to help you finish
your special and unique gift for your loved ones.

For example, Birthday Gifts & Cakes, we have a bakery section with ovens, bakery tools
and all the coloring ingredients that are ready made, available for customers to choose
the shape and sizes of cakes they wanted, and decorate it themselves with the coloring
cream by writing the wishes on top of the cake, with the colors and designs they choose
themselves. Cards such as birthdays, anniversaries and appreciations, customers can
choose the paper designs, the decorations and add-ons they like and make their own

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cards with tools provided such as scissors, tapes, color pencils, etc. And of course, we
would provide artistic and creative ideas and assist customers in the process if
requested as not everyone is born with talent in art. We have screens in each section
displaying a tutorial video showing ways in creating the gifts such as different ways in
how to design a cake, how to make a personalized photo frame, and how to create a
card, etc. Other than that, hands-on method can be shown by our staffs at any time
when requested. And when you have completed your gift, we provide wrapping and
even delivery services if needed. Thus, customers can happily leave with their
personalized gifts where they have put their own effort in making it for their loved ones.
And most important of all, customers do not need to clean up the after mess that are left
behind, such as washing the tools or sweeping off pieces of papers from the floor.

Business Plan 4: Education Consultancy

Education is important as our current Prime Minister is focusing in it as well. A better
education leads to a better lifestyle, society, economic, civilization and quality of life. But
how to get the best education that parent wanted for their children? We, as the
education consultancy will provide all the information, guidance, services and
consultations for students to reach their goals. By looking at a student’s result, interests,
parent’s opinions and financial background, we will provide information and
consultations for free to give them a better understanding and a clearer picture of what
they are going for. Upon agreement, we will proceed to applications until completion and
students and parents will only need to wait for a confirmation letter. Other than that, they
will not be required to do anything more than just paying for the services and any fees
that are required by the universities and institutions. We provide educational choices
from locally, to as far as nationally and internationally such as Japan, China, Australia,
UK and US, etc.

Some of the education consultancy in Kota Kinabalu does not offer full services such as
getting the result transcript from former high schools, co-curricular certificates or any
supporting documents that require the student or parents to get it themselves. Unlike us,
we will include all these process in our services without extra charging to ensure minimal
difficulties and troubles for our customers to save everyone’s time. We also help in
applying visas, accommodation such as hostels and arrange pick-up upon arrival of the
student in the designated place.

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We will have a main branch in Kota Kinabalu, and every once a quarter of the year, we
will have sales team to visit and promote our services in all partner universities and
colleges, as well as reaching out to new ones. This is to promote awareness to the
students the importance of education, and giving them the best direction in how to make
right decisions for their own future.

Business Plan 5: Property Agency

We are licensed property agency and we are to provide efficiency services in selling and
renting properties from studio rooms, apartments, condominiums, to housing such as
single and double-story, semidetached to bungalows. We will have a sales team to
acquire customers whom would like to sale off their properties, looking for a place to
stay, or even a property for investment.

Other than that, not everyone have full understandings in how to conduct a sale and
purchase of a property. Our business provide free consultations for customers to give
them a clear understanding of the process, agreements needed, terms and conditions,
and fees/charges. We also have links with recommended professional lawyer firms that
are trusted and reliable where by going through us, customers can let them handle their
properties. Even though if the customer is not doing business with us, but has
approached to us and needed an assistance from the lawyer firm, we are happy to
provide our best recommendations for free to the customers, because we will be getting
our commission from the lawyer’s side instead if there is a sales occurred between the
customer and the lawyer. A courtesy help in advertising each other without an
advertising fee, but only commissions received when there’s sales.

Business Plan 6: Eco-tourism

Sabah is one of the best tourism spot where we have our beautiful islands, nature,
mountain, agriculture and a unique culture. We provide visitors easy access to
rainforests, endangered species, and nature centers such as Sandakan, which serves
as the perfect base for exploring East Sabah’s natural delights. From proboscis monkey
sanctuary, wildlife reserve, Sipadan Island, to turtle island park, rainforest discovery
center, orangutan and Sungai Kinabatangan, etc. Where all the attractions and
interesting places are all around Sabah. Other than that, we also provide Eco Tour such

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as jungle trekking, adventure to National Park, experiencing Sabah’s flora and fauna by
catching a glimpse of the Largest Flower on the Planet – Rafflesia, and Mountain
Climbing in Kundasang.

Our goal is to preserve the nature and ecosystem by going green, at the same time
promoting our Sabah tourism and cultural aspects.

Business Plan 7: Photography Studio

We provide photography services from personal, weddings, family portraits, to events
such as birthdays, dinners and party celebrations, etc. When you are too busy enjoying
and being involved in all these wonderful moments that you have no time to take your
own pictures, do not want to trouble your friends all the time for helping you to take your
pictures, do not have a camera or forgotten to bring one, or wanted a better quality of
photos taken to capture the moments etc., we will help solve all these problems.

The difference between a photographer and us, which basically providing the same
services, is the pricing strategy. Nowadays, a hired photographer will cost very high up
to above RM1k for one event of shooting. We offer different types of packages to
accommodate different needs of various customers. As listed below:-

Personal Package Event Package Wedding Package Hourly Package

RM100 ~ RM250 RM150 Onwards RM800 Onwards RM20/hour
Personal/Modeling Birthdays, Dinners, Wedding albums, Only for Personal
portraits, personal Parties, Exhibitions, portraits, wedding and Event
photographer, etc. Runways, etc. dinner, day/night, Photography.
etc.
* Any extra services and charges will be determined on terms and conditions apply.
* Extra charges apply for Albums.

Our starting price is as low as RM100, which is highly affordable for a lot of people
compared to studios in Kota Kinabalu which is charging at least RM250 for personal
portrait photography. Other than that, we also have our operations running in our studio
as well as outdoor photo shootings.

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Business Plan 8: Business Hotel – caters to smart business and leisure travelers
Business hotel mainly catered for travelling executives for business purposes. It is
supposed to provide accommodation with integrated services under a competitive price.
This business model is best suited for rising industrial or economy hub, where there is
an increase of demand in foreign manpower as well as increase in non-local business
interaction. For instance, Kota Kinabalu is a city aiming to be the national new petroleum
hub due to the exploitation of reserve fossil fuel. However, due to the state relatively lack
of experience and manpower in this specific industry, it requires a large influxes of
professional personnel to provide the necessary knowledge and expertise to ensure
reliable operation. Hence, a need of short period accommodation is inevitable.

The idea of business hotel is very similar to budget airline. However, the targeted
customers are confined to travelling executives. Hence, the price could be kept
competitive due to the reduction of requirement to cater a large variety of customers. For
most corporation or company, a budget is allocated for traveling expenses of their
respective employee. The companies send their man out for business purposes, but not
for holiday. Thus, a reduction of price due to the exclusion of excess services is indeed a
big welcome for the companies as they could save budget on travelling employee while
still maintaining their commitment on employee’s well being or benefits at the same time.

However, price is only an attraction, but not the only factors to guarantee return
customers, in this case, travelling executives. In order to stand out from the crowds, the
characteristics of being a business hotel should be magnified. The needs and excess of
the travelling executives have to be properly identified. The needs should be paid most
attention to, while the excess could be kept at minimal. This has to be applied from
general, such as decoration, down to fine detail, for example, breakfast. For instance,
decoration should be aimed for simple, neat, clean and easier to maintain in order to cut
cost while manage to be pleasant to customers in the same time. Breakfast should be
simple, buffet style, limit in choices but to be accommodative to most people. Addition of
special feature would help to characterize the hotel as business hotel. For instance,
establishment of free 10 meeting rooms enough to cater 10 persons for every 500
rooms. This would provide a platform for customers to conduct their business in a
professional environment. Other outsourcing services, such as transportation, massage
center, apparel store, beverages have to be chosen carefully and services provided has

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to be customized for the targeted customers. A conference hall with complete

equipments and technological gadgets to conduct meetings, presentations and video call
conferencing available locally and internationally.

Our goals are to provide the best for our clients with a price that can be enjoyed by every
individuals especially business people.

Business Plan 9: Nighttime Operating Automobile Service Center

Nighttime operating automobile service center is aimed to cater the white collar workers
who need to get their car serviced outside the working hour. This business model is best
suited to developed city center as an established city center usually associates with a
large quantity of white collar workers. Their income might enable them to acquire luxury
car. However, they do not possess the luxury of time to service their car under business
hours. Let alone the various inconveniences that come along for servicing their car in
business hours. For instance, a salesman’s mobility might be highly affected due to car
servicing under business hours as they rely heavily on self-transportation. The concept
of this business model is further supported by the improvement on living standards
associated with developed city center. For developing areas, car, is in fact a necessity
for transportation. However, for people who could afford it, car means more than
transportation. It reflects the owner’s background and personality. It is a symbol of
status, an entertainment investment and expression of taste and passion. This is highly
applicable to these white collar workers, especially male. A car can be seen as a toy to
man, but with much heavier price tag. A child spends time with their toy, so do guys with
their car and nighttime operating automobile service center provides them such
opportunity as it is outside of business hours.

An ideal location for nighttime operating automobile service center should be walking
distance from a mall. A normal service which includes oil change, basic checking, body
cleaning, and tires alignment usually take one to three hours. Walking distance to a mall
would offer customers to kill their time in wider choices and in a more enjoyable fashion.
For instance, customer could pass their car to the service center and walk over to the
mall for dinner, a session of movie or even shopping. This allows the customers to multi
task while saving precious time in the process. On economic point of view, this business
model allows slightly larger profit margin than conventional automobile service center

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due to its rarity and lack of competition. Besides, customers would not mind to pay a little
bit extra for the byproducts of such service, time flexibility and conveniences. This
business model does not only bring positive impacts on economics, but to social as well,
in some extent. It is a perfect platform for college students who major in automotive
related business, to practice and work in a part time basis. This definitely helps on their
respective career in the future as it sharpens their skill and understanding on real life
working environment.

Business Plan 10: Restaurant (Lifestyle Café concept)

Restaurant industry has consistently gaining yearly sales in Kota Kinabalu’s market.
Today’s consumers regard food prepared away from home as a necessity.
Convenience, a need for socialization, and gains in real disposable income has led
consumers to spend more of their food dollars in restaurants. There are four broad food
attitude segments among today’s restaurant patrons that we have researched and come
out with which are:-
• Adventurous diners are consumers who are most enthusiastic about trying new
types of foods and ingredients.
• Traditional diners who are least experimental and tend to live in smaller cities.
They are often older, less frequent patrons who enjoy comfort foods.
• Health-conscious diners are more concerned about what they eat when dining
out. They make food choices based on health concerns as well as specialized
diets such as vegetarian, high protein or low carbohydrate, etc.
• Carefree diners who want to enjoy eating and forget about eating healthy.
Consumers under this category are typically males/consumers and/or under age
of 50.

The biggest advantages for our group to undertake this restaurant business will be the
skills, knowledge and experiences among our group members. With our previous
working experiences in the field of sales and marketing, food and beverage, and even
running a family restaurant, we have a firm base and confidence tight in our hands.

TEAM’S STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

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Teams can have areas of strengths because of the team personality as a whole and
because of the contributions of individual personalities on the team. Likewise, team
weaknesses can result from different team personalities as a whole and of individual
team members.

Team’s Strengths Team’s Weaknesses

Structured and organized May not be aware of new trends
Innovative, creative and teamwork Different cultures and practices
Possess working experiences Reliability of data and plan predictability
Achieves practical results Unclear performance expectations

Have unique selling points May make assumptions without knowing all
information
Financially stable May have different opinions and strategies
High enthusiasm Lack of consistency

TABLE OF EVALUATION – SIMPLE SCORING SYSTEM

Factors Min. Personal & Maid Services Personalized
score Corporate (Full Time/ Products &
Concierge Part Time) Services

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Service
Personal fit 5 6
Degree of risk 3 4
Funding needed 5 6
Ease of start-up 4 6
Short-term potential 3 5
Level of preparation 6 7
Competitive threats 4 5
Total 30 49
5 7
6 4
6 6
6 5
5 5
7 6
6 5
41 38

Min. Education Property

Factors Eco-Tourism
score Consultancy Agency
Personal fit 5 5 5 6
Degree of risk 2 5 7 5
Funding needed 5 6 7 6
Ease of start-up 4 6 7 6
Short-term potential 3 5 5 5
Level of preparation 6 7 7 7
Competitive threats 3 6 7 6
Total 30 40 45 41

Nighttime
Operating
Min. Photography Business
Factors Automobile Restaurant
score Studio Hotel
Service
Centre
Personal fit 5 6 7 6 8
Degree of risk 2 5 6 7 7
Funding needed 5 7 8 8 8
Ease of start-up 4 5 6 6 8
Short-term potential 3 5 5 5 5
Level of preparation 6 6 7 6 8
Competitive threats 3 6 7 4 8
Total 30 40 46 42 52

Based on our table of evaluation in the above, the potential business idea that
possesses the highest scores at 52 points is the Restaurant. The highest point
represents the highest potentiality and opportunity of the business idea. Therefore, we
have decided to choose the Restaurant as our potential opportunity.

OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS
Opportunity analysis is a method to evaluate and focus on the opportunity, instead of the
entire venture. This is to provide the basis for making the decision of whether or not to

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act on the opportunity. In our opportunity analysis, we explains the description of our
products and services, assessments of the opportunity, the entrepreneurs and the team,
also the activities and resources needed to translate the opportunity into a viable
business venture and the source of capital to finance the initial venture as well as its
growth.

We have named our restaurant as The Seasons Lifestyle Café. Other than just dining
in our outlet, we provide services such as organizing events, parties, business and
private functions for customers to catering services. Our purpose is to fill in all market
needs as complete as possible. In this competitive era, we do not just sit down and wait
for businesses to come to us, but we take the initiatives to approach customers, make
them happy and satisfy their needs, thus bring in the businesses. Not only we provide
good food and beverages, we also provide services and entertainments to the
customers. We market our brand, our concept and with our cheerful and well trained
staffs, we run it the way a family runs a restaurant. We make customers feel familiar and
comfortable with our restaurant, the feeling of belonged.

From our personal observations we have experienced with regard to the market need in
restaurants, mentally and emotional satisfactions are so much more important than just
plainly physical needs because the mental and emotions are always working in a
person’s mind and body. When a person is hungry, that person has a physical need to
eat and satisfy his hunger. He goes to a restaurant, sits down, orders the food and eats.
But what is making him feel the satisfaction from eating is his mentality and emotions
that tells him he is happy and comfortable being in the restaurant enjoying the good
food, relaxing environment, friendly and attentive staffs, and also with good music. We
see more needs and wants from people other than just eating and drinking to satisfy
their physical needs.

We have done a market research for our products and services through written and
verbal surveys such as questionnaires, word of mouth and in conversations socializing
with people during parties and dinners. People are willing to pay slightly or even more to
be at a comfortable and better place to enjoy their dining experiences. With a concept
that is different from the majorities, we are associated with the media such as magazines
and photographers, radio stations and most of the tourism related companies. We

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promote our goals and objectives of our restaurant through the help of the media, which
is the medium. Partnering with the Medias enables us to organize a place to held their
events and functions, and customers who always love to explore new things and be
involved with Kota Kinabalu’s entertainment life will have a closer chance to expose
themselves to all of these activities. In return, we help the media to advertise and
promote their ongoing events or activities that they wished to promote through our outlet.

Our concept for the restaurant will be a Lifestyle Café serving local and western food
and desserts at affordable prices, and to appeal to wide demographics of any age, male
and female, making the café chain a favorite place for afternoon tea, discussion or
casual meetings with friends, families or business associates. The unique ambience of
our lifestyle café is to provide an environment that is relaxing with jazz music playing in
the background, carefree designs, furniture and cheerful color combination of white, red
and orange that gives people a homey touch, comfortable with pillows and couches
available, and a place for people to spend time, eat, drink and read at the same time as
we have racks containing magazines and interesting books. Our combination of three
major colors, white, red and orange will be our restaurant’s trademark, and it will be put
under a patent protection to avoid the increase of market competitions. Competitions do
exists in this market such as the Secret Recipe all over Kota Kinabalu town, and Origin
Café in Karamunsing Capital etc, which both are running in a concept of a lifestyle cafe.
But we are able to stand out among them with the help from the media, strong teamwork
and publicities.

Other than that, we strongly emphasize on our branding, design and concept to achieve
our goals and objectives of becoming a franchise. This is to reach out to markets all over
Malaysia and break through the international market in the South East Asia. We will
build a restaurant chain showcases a strong interior mix representation that can be
accepted and adapted in any potential market. Natural colors such as our trademark
colors - white, red and orange, to reflect an up-tempo lifestyle of the brand.

Our income will be generated from business partners and clients such as the investors,
the media, the advertisers, tourism field, franchisees and of course, our own customers.
For the initial start up, 60% of the capital will be funded by investors, business partners
and loan facilities by commercial banks. While the rest of the 40% capital will be funded

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by our clients. Our long term revenues will then be generated from our products and
services, and our franchisees. Our outlet will be able to contain up to 100 customers with
around 20 tables to accommodate them. The estimation period of time for our business’s
turnover and return of investment will be in one year’s time. We try to limit our items in
our menus down to a number of 20 items each for food and beverage, and less than 10
items for the desserts. We will expand our choices of menu in time as we expand our
business.

We have acquired information from the suppliers for the materials we needed such as
food and beverage, proceed with interior designers for our outlet and recruitment of
staffs to help run the outlet as waiters and waitresses, outlet supervisors and kitchen
staffs, etc. We have arranged all the people to do our physical works. As for the action
plan, each of us holds the responsible in handling different tasks.

Entrepreneurs Responsibilities Tasks

• Managing the outlet and ensure
Fidelia Leo Management & HR the business runs properly
• Managing and training the staffs
• Income statement, balance sheet,
and financial analysis
Adam Accounts & Finance
• Taking care of the company’s
capital, profit and funds
• Managing the materials for the
food and beverage
Yashir Purchasing & Stocks
• Ensure to reorder stocks when
stocks are low
• Publicity and promoting the outlet
Steffie Sales & Marketing • Marketing plans and strategies to
generate revenues
Our estimated opening ceremony will be on 1st December 2011 and business will
operate by then onwards. With a time frame of 9 months from now, it will be enough time
for us to renovate the outlet, manage all our funds and capitals properly, arrange all
stocks and materials for the menus and equipments for the kitchen, and get in touch with
the media to join us on our opening ceremony. Photographers, advertisers from

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magazines and newspapers, business partners and potential franchisee will all be in our
guests list. We will have a casual party where refreshments are served, finger food and
snacks, lucky draws, photo shoots, free vouchers to be given away, and application for
membership cards and much more interesting events on that day. It will be an enjoyable
day for everyone that will attract great positive responses.

CGC
CGC stands for Credit Guarantee Corporation which was established to assist small and
medium scale enterprises (SME) without or with inadequate collateral to have financial
aid from other normal financial institutions. It is formed by a few large banks and they are
Malayan Banking Berhad, RHB Bank Berhad, Ambank Berhad, CIMB Bank Berhad,
EON Bank Berhad, Affin Bank Berhad and OCBC. The schemes offered by CGC are
only for small and medium scale companies.

Among the schemes offered by CGC, Small Entrepreneur Guarantee Scheme (SEGS) is
the most suitable option for a new and medium scale company. Besides, the
requirements for the application of the financial aid are not too high. This scheme is
applicable for all Malaysian owned and controlled companies registered under the
Companies Act 1965, the Co-operative Societies Act 1993 and entrepreneurs registered
with the Companies Commission of Malaysia or any other authoritative body. The
financial facilities provided by this scheme include term loans and overdrafts. Our
company can also apply for a loan with a low interest of no more than 1.5% per annum
under this scheme.

YPEIM
There is also another alternative of financial aid from Yayasan Pembangunan Ekonomi
Islam Malaysia (YPEIM). One of the schemes offered by YPEIM is known as Ar-Rahnu
Micro-credit scheme. It is a concept of obtaining capital for new business by pawning
jewelry. This is an Islamic business concept which both protects the creditors and the
borrowers. It is a very good way to obtain capital to start up a small business within a
short time frame as the efficient process of application saves a lot of time. In our case,
this is not really practical as we must pawn jewelries in order to get the capital and this is
more suitable for smaller scale businesses where only a small amount of capital is
needed.

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PUNB
Financial aid can also be obtained through Permodalan Usahawan Nasional Berhad
(PUNB). The start-up plan offered by PUNB is to help and encourage graduates to be
entrepreneurs. This scheme is only opened to Bumiputera or company fully owned by
Bumiputera which charges a low interest of 3% per annum. The processes of application
include registration and to pass the competency test, attend Kursus Rancangan
Perniagaan Prosper Siswazah, business plan presentation, approval and attending
Kursus asas Keusahawaan Siswazah. This alternative will not be taken into
consideration by our company as our company is not fully owned by Bumiputera and
hence, it is not eligible to apply for the scheme.

MECD
Ministry of Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development (MECD) as a company limited
by guarantee, with the aim to ensure that small bumiputera entrepreneurs will have
access to financial assistance to finance their development. The TEKUN Program was
initiated with the objectives to offer additional capital financing to small bumiputera
enterprises; to encourage saving culture; to create a network of bumiputera
entrepreneurs; and to develop TEKUN entrepreneurs who are competitive and
successful. TEKUN offers loans in the amount from RM1,000 to RM10,000 for the first
loan, and up to RM20, 000 for the second loan, with service charge fixed at 8% annually.
However, again, our company is not fully owned by Bumiputera, therefore we are not
eligible for this scheme either.

Agro Bank
Agro Bank is established to support entrepreneurs in agricultural field. It is providing
collateral and guarantor-free loan to entrepreneurs who are interested in agricultural
sector through micro credit scheme. A maximum amount of RM50,000 is loaned to
entrepreneur who is involved in the production of major food items and a maximum
amount of RM20,000 is loaned to entrepreneur who is involved in the processing and
marketing of major food items. This scheme is also meant to help those youngsters who
lost their jobs during the economic crisis and this provides them a good opportunity to
own their own businesses.

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SME Bank
The SME Start-Up is unique in that it offers financing and/or business development
support when entrepreneurs are ready to commercialize a product or service. This
means that when we have a prototype and we require financing and/or business
development support to move into production and/or marketing, SME Bank might be
able to help us even if we do not have sufficient collateral or the mandatory track record.
To support greater entrepreneurship in Malaysia, the SME Start-Up has been designed
for all new businesses across SME classifications and industries including ICT and agro-
based activities and is specially targeted towards businesses with market-viable
products or services ready for domestic and/or international commercialization. Eligibility
to apply for this will be having a viable business idea or product already distributed with
new opportunities for market expansion such as franchising. Limit of financing is up to
RM5 million with a 0.25% of approved loan as the processing fee.

For a micro SME, the maximum amount of money can be loaned is RM 500000, while
the maximum amount of loan for small and medium SME are RM 5 million and RM 10
million respectively. This will be the best alternative among all of the others because the
loan is opened to the public even to non Bumiputera entrepreneurs. Besides, our
company falls under the SME category and this scheme can provide the largest sum of
capital compared to other financial agencies. In our case, at least RM300,000 is needed
to start up the The Seasons Lifestyle Café as a huge sum of money will be spent on the
working capitals such as the designs, equipments and materials.

Therefore, we have chosen the scheme offered by SME Bank as the best option as our
capital to finance the initial start-up.

REFERENCES

1) http://www.corporateconcierge.com/
2) http://www.headconcierge.com/
3) http://www.businessideas.net/businessideas/category/interest-or-passion/retail

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4) http://www.parttimemaid.com/
5) http://www.borneo-tropical-vacation.com/nature-tour.html
6) http://goseasia.about.com/od/Sabah/tp/east_sabah_attractions_malaysia.htm
7) http://www.grupocappuccino.com/
8) http://www.hotelmule.com/management/html/25/n-2225.html
9) http://www.smebank.com.my/web/guest/product/start;jsessionid=8518242AC960
C9C3E86E3314BFC5303C
10) http://www.agrobank.com.my/
11) http://www.malaysia.gov.my/EN/Relevant
%20Topics/IndustryInMalaysia/Business/IKS/IKSTrainingProgramAndDevelopme
nt/MECD/Pages/MEDC.aspx

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