When Prestige magazine first emailed me a few months ago about being nominated for the Prestige Top 40 Under 40 I wasn’t sure if they made a mistake because I had already been featured some few years ago. They came back though and told me about how this year was different. It’s their 10th year doing the Top 40 Under 40 and so this year they decided to do a Top 40 of all the 300-400 candidates that have made it in the past 10 years.
The process was a bit more stringent. Among all the candidates nominated we had to go for an interview with a panel of judges. They asked some pretty tough questions at the interview. Things about how our business will deal with the respective challenges we face in the current competitive business environments and corporate social responsibility ie what we have done back for society.
Then we were all invited to attend this huge Gala Dinner where they announced the winners. The Top 8 of the Prestige 40 Under 40.
Here we are.
I’m happy that a number of friends of mine were in the Top 8 too. Bryan Loo of Chatime, Chan of Exabytes, David Lai the magician, Kenny Goh from Macrokiosk and Chung Lynn from Nandos.
Yes if you notice Shorty is on stage up there with me collecting a prize too. Haha… the story behind that was that Chung Lynn from Nandos wasn’t able to make it for the dinner so she asked me if I could have my wife represent her. So Shorty was there up on stage collecting the award on behalf of her… and everyone apparently was thanking her for bringing Nandos to Malaysia.
Here are some more pictures of the night.
From left is David, me, Kenny and Bryan. Right before the awards were announced. We were all busy drinking and getting a little high.
To be honest by the time we got on stage to collect the awards I think we were all a little tipsy but we were on our best behaviour to make sure we don’t make a fool out of ourselves.
Here’s Shorty, me and Bryan and his wife who was the one responsible for getting me to drink so much.
Chan from Exabytes receiving one of the prizes we got that night.
We got so many prizes that it began to feel like Christmas. We got everything from luggage bags to watch winders from Mont Blanc. It was so fun.
Not sure what was happening at this picture.
But it looked like Kenny was saying something .
After all the prizes were given out they announced another award. The RHB Business Excellence Award and I was super surprised they called out my name.
The thing about awards for entrepreneurs is that they tend to honour one person. The truth is that no one person builds a business or a company on his own. It’s always a group of people that do it together. So this award is dedicated to my business partner and fellow Co-Founder Ming and the fantastic team that works with us in all the offices around the region.
And of course… here’s to my dear wife.
Who has always been super supportive of me ever since she met me. The entire four feet nine of her. Thank you my love!
You can read more about the Top 8 here in this article:
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space