KUALA LUMPUR: Armed with the idea that food truly connects people, Nicholas Lim Pinn Yang set out to create the integrated media publishing company now known as Foodie Media Bhd
.
The ACE Market-bound company launched its initial public offering (IPO) priced at 30 sen per share last week and is confident that it has a competitive advantage.
Foodie Media aims to raise RM41.1mil for various strategic initiatives that will further cement the company’s standing in the world of digital content.
Lim who is co-founder and chief executive officer of Foodie Media told StarBiz that the company started out with simple food reviews and videos, but has now grown to offer a much wider range of services, including commerce, livestreaming and connecting brands.
“We started off with Penang Foodie since I was a Penang boy who followed my father to the market and watched him do business. I saw how he hustled for the family and those experiences shaped my belief that success is not built overnight,” he said.
Today, Foodie Media owns 37 brands and has big plans for the future.
A part of the IPO proceeds will firstly go into hiring more staff, as Lim reiterated that people are the heartbeat of the company.
“We will hire about 190 people in the next 36 months and these will include content creators and live streaming personalities.
“At the moment the hosts we have, utilise the three rooms in our curent office but we are getting a new building that will have 30 rooms, so followers can expect 10 times the amount of what we are doing right now,” he said.
The company has cleverly leveraged the rise of social media to grow as a company.
Lim said data points to a social media index that grew 23.9% from 2019 to 2024.
“That is the core of our industry, as sponsored content is a major revenue contributor to our company. Supporting that is the fact that live commerce grew 92.5% from 2019 to 2024. One of the pillars we are looking to grow is the live commerce one,” he said.
Lim’s wife Ang Rui Mei, who is also Foodie Media’s chief operating officer said having 46 million followers has benefited Foodie Media greatly, as it gives the company direct interaction with them over different platforms.
“This gives us full control of what is posted, and allows us to expand into other pillars like community and commerce. We also use the same account to do live selling so this converts our viewers into buyers and 24.8% of them are repeat customers,” Ang said.
She added Foodie Media’s platforms have different streams to cater to Bahasa Malaysia, English and Chinese speaking viewers.
“From the IPO proceeds, one of the initiatives we plan is to use artificial intelligence to translate into other languages so that viewers in other countries can benefit from what we post. We aim to be known as a Malaysian company within the region,” she said.
Another interesting factor is that not all its content is paid for.
Lim said one of the main reasons Foodie Media started out was to help smaller businesses gain more traction and thus, have more customers.
“For instance, an aunty selling nasi lemak from a stall. All those reviews are free, we only want to help them. And we are so thankful to our followers because these small businesses have told us of the long queues and sold-out food because of our content.
That is where our heart also lies – in truly helping the owners of small businesses and giving them an opportunity to promote what they offer,” Lim noted.
Lim said the company is sitting at about 30% in terms of margins, and is hopeful that they will maintain that figure after the listing since they have been profitable since 2018.
He said the company looks forward to a healthy profit after listing, especially since its compound annual growth rate has hit 32.3% for the last five years. For its financial year ended Aug 31, 2024, the company reported a net profit of RM7.45mil on the back of RM23.95mil in revenue.
For the first 10 months of this year, Lim said the company hit RM31.1mil in revenue.
“We also aim for double-digit growth in both topline and bottomline after listing. We do not plan on slowing down or being complacent. There is still plenty of room for us to grow and we look forward to doing it,” he said.
Applications for the IPO will close on Nov 19, and listing is scheduled for Nov 28.
