- 7 hours ago
An interview with Raymond Gabriel of People Systems Consultancy explores zero-capital entrepreneurship and how structured people management can drive measurable income growth for small businesses and individuals.
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00:08all right thank you for tuning in on niagawani we see that across malaysia and southeast asia
00:13one of the biggest questions when we talk about poverty elevation is this is capital really the
00:18missing ingredient or is it something deeper so our guest today believes that sustainable
00:22income growth doesn't begin with money but with mindset skills and also empowerment so at the
00:28core of its work is entrepreneurial equalization or ee a zero capital model that focuses on mindset
00:34skills and also empowerment so the model is also being implemented through maybank's rise a platform
00:40which helps communities which generate real income growth so to discuss further on this joining us
00:47now in the studio this morning is raymond gabriel the co-founder and executive director of people
00:51systems consultancy or psc thank you so much raymond and welcome to the show how are you i'm good thank
00:57thank you thank you for having me thank you as well let's start with the core philosophy behind
01:03the ee or the entrepreneurial equalization you often said before this about empowerment and not
01:08entitlement so that is actually what drives lasting change in your opinion but what is that distinction
01:17so important when addressing poverty and income equality what's your thoughts on that i think when we
01:23we've done this program across asean we've actually helped 120 000 families get out of poverty
01:29and then when you look at their indirect beneficiaries their children extended families
01:33it's one to five so almost 500 000 people we find a common team most of them who come
01:39to us and come to our programs especially in malaysia have got some kind of loan before the program
01:45but they don't have the necessary skills to grow the business and what happens is they get into debt
01:49yeah so when they come to us they're already about 30 000 or 20 000 ringgit in debt and they're
01:55struggling to pay it back struggling to provide for their families and struggling to grow their
01:58incomes as well so sometimes if you give loans to people without the proper skills business skills
02:04i'm talking about not uh vocational skills like people can they have talents they'll know how to cook
02:09they would have been trained how to sew they would have been trained how to actually start a small
02:12business but if you don't teach them business skills how to sell you find that they actually get into
02:17more trouble because they can't sustain they can't sustain they don't know how to grow their business
02:20they don't have the confidence to go and talk to people they don't know how to market sell
02:24they don't understand social media and these are all the skills that we teach them so that they can
02:28actually grow sustainability and what we like to do is we like to turn it the other way around so
02:33we
02:33like to actually mentor and coach people and train them for six months watch their income go up let
02:39them get more familiar with the business let them get understand the business the industry well
02:43then connect them to loans because then they understand why they're getting the financing for
02:47they know how to use it in the right manner and then scale their business even more so that's our
02:52philosophy in in terms of uh entrepreneurship so don't give upfront money because you give people
02:57upfront money you find that they're going to get in trouble very very fast that's very important
03:01when we talk about this uh this campaign we are under this maybank rise under pse as well
03:08um which especially striking uh our interest which is a zero capital uh model where in a world that
03:16we see that entrepreneurship is usually associated with fundings grants also micro loans uh you've
03:21chosen to focus on this mindset and skills instead instead of the money so why did you make that
03:27decision under psc and how does that approach tackle poverty at its root rather than just uh treating the
03:33symptoms the whole ecosystem i think when we talked to maybank foundation um the ceo at the time tatu
03:39sharil and currently um miss islin who's running the foundation they wanted to do something different
03:44rather than follow the model of just giving microfinance and and and giving it out to people
03:49they decided to actually look at empowering people and they worked with a very difficult group
03:54um they wanted to try helping a group that was actually very unbanked and very not supported in
04:00asian which is people with disabilities and we saw that through the program even though they were
04:05banked they could give financing very easily they chose to actually build skills build capacity first
04:09mentor the people until their income came up until they had the skills until they had the knowledge
04:14and then bring them into uh proper financing and proper uh growth in terms of uh whatever assistance
04:20a bank could offer and that model has worked fantastically well i think uh more than 50 000 people
04:25have been impacted through that program that maybank is doing called the rise program
04:28and it's a very good proof point of financial inclusion and how maybank is actually driving
04:33and being at the forefront of esg um and especially the s part of ejc the the social impact part
04:40and looking at how to empower people without just giving them money up front and you know uh
04:47expecting them to to know what to do with money and expecting them to grow you actually take the time
04:51to build skills build confidence build uh mindset that of an entrepreneur and then give them
04:56strategic selling skills how to scale how to grow and then the financing can come in later so it's a
05:02very good proof point of financial inclusion actually i have one concern um if or when it focuses too heavily
05:08on the handouts on the skills on the digital literacy for example what kind of long-term behaviors or
05:14dependencies does that sometimes create for all these entrepreneurs when you create financing and when people think that
05:22financing is the only way to scale they wait for financing and sometimes when you look at different
05:27levels of financing especially when you move up higher from micro loans to sme loans you need to have
05:32collateral you need to have a business there's a lot of qualifications and sometimes people don't have
05:37that and so it's it's not very easy to get financing as well there's financing easily available in terms of
05:43programs like techoon eim banks actually have got a lot of good options available but sometimes to qualify
05:50for it and to apply for it people don't really have the opportunity to do that we currently launched
05:57an app called biz lift to help our participants and biz lift actually creates a business plan automatically
06:04from our digital course book which enables people to actually apply for loans very very easily but that
06:09comes after six months so we like to put the financing part later after you have the skills
06:14after you have a proper plan after you understand your industry and that makes the business more
06:18sustainable in the long run i find that people who get sometimes money up front when they come to us
06:22you know we're the first time entrepreneurs or people who have actually done a business for a while
06:26a lot of them actually very sad they're sad you know because they cannot repay the loan the pressure to
06:32them and their family is enormous they're not prepared they can't pay back they can't afford to pay back even
06:36sometimes at 700 ringgit a month it's tough for them because if you look at average b40 in malaysia
06:42right uh it says for those who have a household income below 5300 but if you look at current expenses
06:48average household according to to uh mof bank negara right it's about 5600 so a lot of people actually
06:54struggling they they can't actually meet expenses and then you add debt on top of that it's difficult
07:00malaysia also has a debt to gdp ratio of 85 percent so we are very very high in terms of
07:05that and i think
07:06reducing it would be the way to go and build it more sustainable incomes and especially when the
07:11concern now is a rising geopolitical tensions yes going on so that's actually concerning but would
07:16it be fair to say that money can sometimes amplify problems if if the fundamentals aren't in place
07:23yes it can i think you're right if you look at uh the current situation the geopolitical situation in the
07:29middle east uh our diesel prices have gone up and a lot of people who do business they rely on
07:35diesel
07:35so it's going to have an effect on cost cost of goods have gone up so pricing is going to
07:39change
07:40which means that customers will have to pay more people have to to increase their uh costs of of
07:45their products and the cost of living itself for the family is going to go up as well all these
07:50have
07:50got a a big effect on the economy but another thing that's happening is when you look at almost 70
07:55percent
07:56of the aSEAN economy it's an informal job economy meaning a lot of them are uh gig workers working
08:03for gojek grab you know other people informal kind of jobs which means there's no stable income but when
08:08your cost goes up and you have no stable income you're actually going to get more into poverty the world
08:13bank recently raised uh released a report it's about 826 million now people who have gone into poverty in
08:222026 in 2025 was 788 million right so just in the span of a couple of months not taking into
08:28account
08:28the geopolitical situation here that's going to affect more people it may reach a billion people
08:32very soon so we need to do something differently we need to look at how we can build our local
08:37economies
08:37our local people and get them to raise incomes to to actually match the current cost of living or
08:43current situation that's out there especially for micro and sme businesses yeah and you mentioned earlier
08:49you work closely with marginalized communities across not just malaysia but in southeast asia as well
08:54basically asian so from your experience on the ground what are the real obstacles that people face
08:59those in poverty when trying to achieve sustainable income growth um is it excess is it confidence or
09:05systems or market exposure that are actually all of the above that you can share i think it's all of
09:10the above the first thing is um a lot of people don't actually believe in uh the kind of marginalized
09:16entrepreneurs that that we work with especially like when we had this experience with maybank the
09:20rise program people thought pwd so people with disabilities uh or cut the oku can uh they are the
09:27ones who are dependent they can't actually uh be someone who can contribute to the family income
09:32and in many situations we find that somebody in the family an uncle or cousin they actually uh giving
09:37money to them every month or they're trying to actually support them today that whole situation from
09:41that 50 000 which we change has trained they've become the main income earner for the family they're putting their
09:46brothers children to university we see many cases where they're paying for education not only for
09:50their own children but for the extended family as well and they're supporting them so they create jobs
09:55for other okus for other able-bodied uh b40 communities they actually give jobs to two or three people so
10:02we
10:02see that multiplier effect and i think that's something very important a mindset shift um the other issues
10:08which i think which you need to deal with is like real business skills so when you look at uh
10:14people wanting
10:14to do uh to market their products and we teach them how to use tiktok we teach them how to
10:18use facebook
10:19digital marketing instagram whatever that's relevant in different countries and when we teach them those skills
10:25it's the first exposure they have otherwise they're just copying what everybody else is doing but
10:28something unique and strategic to them because we don't teach theory everything we teach is implemented into the business
10:34hands-on hands-on and they actually use it for their own business which they choose i think that's
10:38a big differentiator as well uh one more thing i think that can change if you look at malaysia and
10:43asean is this whole concept of of vocational training i think you should profile people and
10:48find out what their passion is sometimes people just follow everybody else and they go for a cooking
10:52program or they go for a tailoring class but they're really not passionate about it they're just
10:56thinking okay this is the only option i have but actually a business is something innate in all of us
11:00we believe that's our philosophy everybody has a talent that you can monetize even your hobby can
11:05be monetized right if you're collecting things or trading things this can be actually a small
11:09business for you that actually can supplement your income so i don't think it's it's even about
11:13going full-time into business the families which are struggling now to actually cope with the
11:17rising cost of living they can do something part-time even using their hobbies and earn extra money for
11:22the family and um taking back from what we were talking about there's a statement from jp morgan that
11:28identifies malaysia and china uh being the most resilient economies against the energy shocks that's
11:33going on right now um how much do you agree about that can we actually all the entrepreneurs can
11:37actually have some a bit of relieved or um or what's your thoughts on that i think the electrification
11:44of uh or economy in terms of vehicles and transport has played a big part so there's a lot of
11:48people now
11:49who've got electric cars uh they they have the ability to transport china started that many many years ago in
11:54fact china is a leader now in ev around globally around the world so they don't have a lot of
11:59reliance on uh diesel or petrol fuel cars in china certain cities you find it's mostly ev and i think
12:05that's a good policy that our government has started um to actually look at being a leader in ev in
12:10the
12:10region and to look at having infrastructure bringing in different uh players who can actually
12:15contribute to that economy that will definitely help i guess and that's a good policy but we also have
12:20a reliance on petrol cars as well and i think we need to slowly uh understand how we can actually
12:25help those people and how to transition better into a sort of an ev economy that is not affected by
12:30sudden spikes in in oil prices i guess yeah are there any difference in terms of challenges between
12:36urban poor communities and more rural underserved areas definitely so when you look at rural areas the
12:44biggest challenge they have is market uh what's the size of market that they have or what kind of
12:49opportunities do they have to resell it in urban areas when we train people who come from urban
12:54poverty or people are starting small micro businesses there's a bigger market so they can scale a bit
12:59faster so when we train the rural communities we teach them how to look at infrastructure points or
13:05places where they can actually scale a bit better um even though situations are different their their
13:11cost of living may be lower in a rural area but then to to actually grow the business faster may
13:16may take a bit more time so we try to find strategies that work for that area like looking at
13:20the
13:20nearest venue or city area that they can scale or looking at using online approaches to actually
13:27scale up their growth and bring their products to the mainstream nationally now it's a lot easier
13:33covid has actually helped that so a lot of people are selling online there's infrastructure to deliver
13:37your products you don't have to actually worry about actually going and meeting customers face to face
13:40so these are things and strategies that we bring into play to enable the to close the rural urban gap
13:46in terms of incomes let's talk further on entrepreneurial equalization or ee and how it works in practice
13:52can you walk us through the structure of the program from financial literacy to entrepreneurial coaching
13:58to micro business support what happens from day one and what changes over the course of the training so
14:04we start off the program the first two hours we look at actually a mindset shift because most of the
14:10people we we impact especially those from the b40 community or hardcore poverty you find that there's
14:16a generational poverty with them probably their grandfather wish to earn maybe four ringgit father 40
14:22ringgit and they earning 400 it looks as if it's going up but actually with cost of living and cost
14:26of
14:26goods is not so there's a lack of belief that they can actually start something so we start by by
14:31giving
14:32them what you call entrepreneurial self-efficacy which is a concept where you actually build a
14:36belief system of the entrepreneur itself that they can actually do well and succeed and that's very
14:41important because if you start anything in life if you don't believe you're going to do well from sports
14:46to anything else you're never going to succeed at it right most of uh olympic gold medal winners they
14:50already believe that they can actually win gold before they actually do it so we start with that first
14:54and there's a module that we do to teach people how to do it and the methodology that we created
14:59to
14:59actually enable that from there we go into business strategies sales strategies and business
15:04strategies to actually look at scaling innovation um and and that enables them to be it's a three-day
15:10program and we also teach financial literacy to enable them to understand how to actually use the
15:15extra money well not to to overspend or get more into that but that enables them to have a quick
15:20start
15:20and very quickly we push people to actually start earning income so the first three weeks four weeks
15:25you'll see that income is already coming into the family they're excited and they want to do more
15:29we follow that through with a six-month mentoring program it's very structured which teach things
15:34like digital marketing we teach them how to use uh different techniques in that's a current in the
15:39workplace we keep modifying it to look at being current and and being relevant like tiktok was a big
15:45game changer recently in the last two or three years and we've incorporated how to use tiktok well how to
15:50actually grow your business to tiktok and a lot of our participants are doing very well uh using
15:54tiktok and and selling their products so we after that six-month program we actually look at how we
16:00can connect them to financing or micro insurance or other products that the family needs um and we
16:06measure the impact based on their not just how the income has helped them but how the income has
16:11actually helped the family as well is there better access to education infrastructure utilities like
16:17for children do they have better access to wi-fi so they can study better um is there better access
16:22to
16:22nutrition and how is that helping the family so overall we look at the well-being of the family as
16:27well and then we see that change happen six months to a year we also continue to mentor them sometimes
16:31more than six months uh up to a year or two they can always come back they get support that
16:36they need
16:36we become like a family support system for them like you know that uncle you have who's very good in
16:40business that you go to so we play that role of that uncle to to those families who are marginalised
16:45and
16:45try and support them that way amazing and given the fact that um this model has also been
16:51operationalised under maybank's rise platform how does working with an institution like maybank help
16:56skill impact while keeping the program grounded at community level i think maybank has got a lot of checks
17:02and balances they've got a lot of kpi so got a lot of structure and they've enabled us to grow
17:07through
17:07ASEAN so we're very grateful for the opportunity to work with a with a bank like maybank because when you
17:12work
17:12with a bank that's already got a heart because their own their main motto is humanising financial
17:17services they always look at connecting with communities i think it's a fantastic opportunity
17:21because you have the support of a bank the infrastructure of a bank you have financing from
17:26a bank and different products you find a lot of people not just are not just interested in financing
17:30right a lot of our Bumiputra and muslim beneficiaries they want to go to hajj for the first time they
17:37want
17:37to have access to takaful products that they can actually take up and the bank brings all this
17:42added value to the beneficiaries and that's working with maybank has actually enabled us to understand
17:47how much support we can bring to communities actually amazing and in based on your report i read
17:53here participants achieving 100 to 400 percent income growth within just six months six months
17:59that you mentioned earlier after completing programs what's actually driving these results this is actually a
18:04very um positive results is it the behavior change or better decision making or is it the market
18:12confidence or is it everything combined all together i think there's a combination so the first thing is
18:16the practicality of the program like we mentioned we don't teach case studies we don't teach people you
18:22know theory and then expect them to implement it everything that we teach is implemented into the program
18:27itself and i think that approach of not giving financing up front where they make mistakes up front and then
18:32they
18:32realize oh i shouldn't spend money on this i should have done that is a good model that we have
18:36actually
18:36created most of those results so we 70 of our participants achieved that 100 to 400 percent income
18:42increase and on average and we find that that's actually higher than a global standard the global
18:47standard of success rates is about 30 percent some people measure 10 they do a like a small survey of
18:53of like 10 of the participants and they report based on that we track everyone we make sure that everyone
18:58is
18:58actually monitored uh it's actually it's very transparent and i think a lot of institutions
19:03and organizations like working with us because of the transparency and the high success rate that we
19:08achieve um could you share maybe a few real life examples that captures a transfer transformation yeah
19:15bringing that program rise that we do in maybank there's a participant called afik bani
19:21he was just like us going to work every day he was an automotive engineer
19:24uh but on the way to work one day he was taking his motorbike he was hit by a car
19:28a hit and run
19:29accident and he lost the use of his legs so it became wheelchair bound yeah both legs so he couldn't
19:34walk and uh like everybody was struggling to do before he came for the rise program he thought okay i'll
19:39just open up a food business but he was struggling because he was just earning about two thousand a
19:43month he had a family to support parents you know you know he's really struggling when he came for the
19:47rise program when we when we did a profiling he realized that he had automotive skills right engineering skills
19:52so he built uh system and products actually to retrofit cars so that he can drive got jpj approval
19:58got serum approval got all the approvals in it today from that two thousand a month before the program
20:04is earning about twenty thousand a month he employs five people who are with disabilities in his own
20:10small factory and he's actually exporting to places like indonesia now so it's it's a big success story
20:15right so started all from this from the maybank rice program yeah um isma leza another person who came
20:21she's a caregiver and maybank has opened up uh the program to to caregivers of people with disabilities
20:26as well she used to be at less than a thousand ringgit almost like three hundred four hundred ringgit
20:32after the program now she's earning about eight thousand and uh she does frozen food she's got uh
20:37clients like jaya grocer richemo coffee that she actually exports her products to and the mentoring
20:42process helped her to actually get into these companies how to actually export to bigger companies
20:48fulfill all their their requirements and she's doing if you go from less than a thousand to eight
20:52thousand that's like a eight hundred percent pay increase so you can imagine how it's going to
20:57going to help your family it's a huge game changer as well so target has achieved actually beyond the
21:02target as well and doing better than other regions in the country country in the regions um so what's next
21:09for
21:09psc also the other under this maybank rice and how do you define success in the future what's your next
21:16goal or plan for psc i think for maybank rice there's already a a plan where we have gone through
21:23rise 1.0 2.0 there's 3.0 that's coming in and we are working with maybank to actually look
21:27at defining it
21:28the use of technology and keeping relevant with uh using technology ai is a big game changer that we are
21:35working on um that we want to to help people with uh but i think uh psc itself we are
21:42looking at okay
21:42we've we've impacted 120 000 families in asean but how do we reach 3 million how do we reach 2
21:47million
21:47because in asean poverty is 90 million people right so how can we do it more and i think technology
21:54is
21:54the main way to go so i think our app based lift uh looking at at how ai is going
21:58to actually be built
21:59into it how we can simplify things for the beneficiaries we work with that's going to be a big game
22:05changer that allows us to actually impact more people and work with governments in the region
22:08to enable more impact to the communities that really need it and equalize that that income right
22:14because the cost of goods are going to continue to rise especially with this escalating situation
22:18and we could want to look at how we can quickly bring this intervention to more people to help them
22:22grow faster are there any misconception that you'd like the policy makers or public to unlearn
22:29or about poverty and also entrepreneurship that if there's any what would it be i think the first
22:35concept is the mindset of people towards marginalized communities be it people with disabilities or
22:43people who come from very hardcore communities these are people with capacity don't write them off
22:47they have a lot of talent they have a lot of capability all they need is some guidance and some
22:51help and
22:52that's what we're trying to to bridge that gap so these are not people who need handouts they need
22:56opportunities right and we need to enable the an ecosystem that actually gives them opportunities
23:03to start something i think the second thing is uh people think that giving uh aid giving
23:10financing is the answer but that keeps them reliant they don't get them out of poverty like a lot of
23:14people with that hundred to four hundred percent income increase get out of social welfare they get
23:18out of a need to actually go and get more money from the government or like you know be on
23:22social welfare
23:23because if they've become uh above the b40 now the m40 they're they're actually moving up right so
23:29they i think policies need you need to look at actually empowering people in terms of uh business
23:35skills business mindsets uh teaching them you know in their own local language in their own local
23:39communities what they can do because we go nationwide we don't bring people here but we reach out to
23:44where people are all over malaysia including rural sarawak and sabah we've been working there since 2008
23:49right so we we need to actually have a shift in policy to look at bringing interventions to the
23:54people at the community level that work in a very practical way and you can actually be very amazed in
24:00terms of the transformation and what you would see very quickly from interventions like this so just
24:05giving aid giving uh money to people giving it up front with it keeps them actually dependent on it
24:11you want to make them independent entrepreneurs so that is a very big game changer i think that can happen
24:16at the government level now imagine we are giving out billions in loans billions in microfinance and
24:22around asean the default rate is sometimes 60 percent so imagine if we do it the other way around the
24:28way
24:28we're doing it you can actually save billions right the world banks is um economic empowerment social
24:35welfare right effectiveness is at 0.1 percent uh there's 20 trillion dollars being spent on social welfare
24:42to actually empower people around the world and 20 20 trillion spend 0.1 percent effectiveness what
24:48if we can change it around to 70 percent effectiveness you're going to look at saving governments a lot
24:51of money and transitioning people out of poverty it's a permanent solution and i think uh entrepreneurship
24:57you know financial literacy financial inclusion these are very big game changes if it's done right
25:02you can actually save the government a lot of money and empower the economy to come up with local economies
25:07of
25:07scale and i wish you all the best for that thank you but before perhaps to all the audience that
25:12audiences that require this support from psc and also from maybank rice how can they reach out to you
25:17i think you can go to our website www.peoplesystemconsultancy.com you can go to the maybank foundation
25:24website find out about the rice program you can apply if you qualify you can come for the maybank rice
25:29program but there are other programs if you're not a person with disabilities or somebody else there
25:33there are different programs that we have and we'll be happy to actually have you on board if you
25:37qualify okay raymond it's been a powerful conversation thank you so much for sharing your insights
25:42and what stand out is that the real economy inclusion doesn't start with capital it starts with belief
25:47capability and also opportunity so there was raymond gabriel the co-founder also executive director of
25:52people systems consultancy or psc speaking with us about zero capital entrepreneurship and how
25:57empowerment led models are delivering measurable income growth across communities thank you so much
26:03for watching and you can find this whole discussion on all of our social media platforms and that
26:07includes astroawani.com
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