Succesful Technopreneurs

Mr. Chang Mun Kee

Mr. Chang Mun Kee, a Malaysian aged 49, is an Executive Director of JobStreet and founder of the JobStreet Group. He has also been its Chief Executive Officer since its inception and a Director of the Company since its incorporation. Mr. Chang obtained his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, USA in 1988 and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA in 1990. Prior to founding MOL Online Sdn Bhd in 1995 and subsequently JobStreet.com Sdn Bhd in 1997, he was with Kendall International, a US healthcare company, for 5 years, starting as a process engineer in 1990 before being promoted to manufacturing manager in 1992 and regional director of sales and marketing for Malaysia in 1994. He left Kendall International in 1996 to establish JobStreet.com Sdn Bhd which expanded regionally under his direction. He currently sits on the Boards of Innity Corporation Berhad , Vitrox Corporation Berhad and 104 Corporation, Taiwan.

In July, in fact, it forms a joint venture in Japan that will advertise for engineers from all over Asia to work in the technology sector in Japan. Japanese Electronics makers have moved most of their factories to other parts of Asia, but they still need their midlevel Engineers in research and development center of the back. Jobstreet has also branched out into other services, such as providing recruitment software custom-made for multinational companies. Dell CallCentreMalaysia hired to screen candidates and compile shortlists for  Department staff. Shell selects JobStreet to design and manage web sites working world oil Giants online. Jobstreet is still small, but profit and revenue will grow quickly. The company did not announce the results of 2007 again but  Shin Kao Jack , technology analyst at OSK Investment Bank in Kuala Lumpur, estimated that net profit reached $ 9.6million, an increase of 40% compared with 2006. Revenue reached $ 24.6 million ,he figures, 24% from the previous year. It is listed on the Singapore Exchange technology, Mesdaq , in 2004, and shares are up to 46% over the past year to one cent 54 days. 

Last year the company landed on FORBES ASIA in the best public Company in Asia-Pacific, with under $ 1 billion in annual revenue.

After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1990, Chang returned to Malaysia and took a job as an engineer at a catheter factory in Perlis, a rural state on the Thai border. He spent his evenings and weekends tooling around the Internet. In 1995, figuring he was ready to set out on his own, he started Malaysia Online, the country's first commercial Web site. MOL offered the usual portal services, including online classifieds, and Chang quickly noticed that the job listings were popular. That led to JobStreet.com. By 2000 Chang had decided he had too much on his plate with MOL. He spun off JobStreet into a separate company and sold MOL for $3.2 million to Vincent Tan, the chief executive and controlling shareholder of Berjaya Group. He then plowed $2.6 million into JobStreet and began building the site in earnest. Malaysia's large electronics manufacturing sector, which boasts Dell, Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) and Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) plants, formed the core of JobStreet's early clientele, later followed by industries such as banking and hospitality.

However, open the door to a seasoned global investor. In 1999 he accepted a $1.6 million investment from San Francisco venture capital firm Walden International. After putting in more money in 2001, Walden owned 30% of JobStreet. It urged Chang to hire a chief executive who had more business experience, but there weren't any compelling candidates on the horizon. So Walden decided Chang should stay put--but start acting like a chief executive. That was tough for Chang. To help out, he recruited two Malaysian classmates from MIT: Albert Wong as chief technology officer and Suresh Thiru as chief operating officer.Walden also urged Chang to expand to a few key Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore and the Philippines. And it pushed him to trim costs--JobStreet, as well as MOL, was losing money. "It was a wake-up call," he says. "They demanded that we run it like a real company."

JobStreet is now the largest online recruiter in Malaysia and the Philippines and number two in Singapore. It's not in Thailand yet but is looking to enter. And its seven-year-old India unit, which had languished in a very competitive market, is gaining traction. Last April JobStreet sold half of its India unit for $2 million to

Television Eighteen India in Mumbai, which promptly began promoting the site on the air. Since then the number of registered users has climbed 25%, to 1.5 million. While some countries such as India have strong online recruiters, there are few regional players. Hong Kong's JobsDB, which isn't listed, is JobStreet's chief regional rival. Jobsdb, which operates in 11 countries, says it counts 7 million registered job seekers .JobStreet's move into software services got a boost from Shell in 2006. Shell bought a customized version of JobStreet's recruitment software to power its employment Web sites worldwide and outsourced the sites' management to JobStreet. JobStreet's system helps Shell screen, process and track applications around the globe. Shell Malaysia was one of its first big customers, so when the parent company, which was using six different recruitment software systems worldwide, decided to pick one, Shell Malaysia backed the JobStreet offering, according to Chang. That deal was worth $1 million, plus an annual retainer of $500,000, he says. The Shell deal impressed Flextronics International (nasdaq: FLEX -news - people ), which then bought JobStreet's software to manage its online application and tracking processes in seven Asian.