chapter2: multimedia city

In 1994, Tengku Farith Rithdaudeen was asked to join Road Builder, a listed construction company that his father had just bought into. He was executive chairman of the company. Tengku Farith feels uncomfortable with that because everyone will see that he is a son’s of a chairman at the Road Builder. Besides I wasn’t sure whether leaving CIMB would be the right thing to do as he used to be there for a long time.
Then, his brother in law Shahrir Roose advise him to list down all his weaknesses and show it to his prospective boss, Mr. Chua Hock Chin. To his surprise, Mr. Chua Hock Chin, who are also an executive vice chairman and cofounder of the company impressed with Tengku Farith action which considered as a mature person to reveal his weaknesses.
Tengku Farith was given the position as business development manager. He did big projects including Kuantan Port and Bes Raya. But, the Road Builder has its rival, DRB Hicom in competing to get project at Kuantan port. After discussing with EPU (Economic Planning Unit), DRB Hicom got the Kemaman project while Road Builder got the Kuantan Project.
In 1995, he was approached by Syed Jalaludin of UPM a project which is not necessarily agricultural basis. Again, the fact that good relationship led to business opportunity came to test when he had to get his cousin who worked in MIMOS involved.
Road Builder decided to build a cluster of research centers, and while doing so, they met a lot of important persons including Ariff Nun of MDC who was quite hilarious, and Mohamad Awang Lah of CEO Jaring which was opposite to Ariff Nun.
The idea of setting up Multimedia City did not go smoothly because EPU not giving an approval. This is because it involved university land and they don’t think this project would be great benefit to country. Tengku Farith and his team wrote to prime minister and attach a lot of supporting document. After read all document, Dr. Mahathir not have objection but unfortunately, the strong objection come from the late Othman Yeop Abdullah who was MDC chairman at the time. He thought that this project would steal the thunder away from Cyberjaya. Year 1997 was a Asian economic crisis and the big project like Multimedia City would be out of question anyway

chapter1: meeting future partner

Chapter 1 tells us about how the skali founder which is this book writer meets his future partner. The writer name is Tengku Farith bin Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen and he is the CEO of Skali. He has 6 siblings. His father is government minister. When he was 13 years old, he was study in Canada because his parents felt that international exposure would stead their children well.Tengku Farith was graduate from Carleton University in year 1992.During studied, Tengku Farith was trained by her mother in financial management which many of the room was rented out to other student and Tengku Farith must take care for house management. After finish his study, he was come back to Malaysia and work in CIMB in privatization unit. He works as corporate finance executive. This position teaches him how to be thick-skinned which is essential for business. He had to organize all entertainment functions for the company.
His get exposure in IT when he was child in 80s.He use Apple II to play game and read a lot of book and magazine about computer to learn how to do basic programming using BASIC language. He takes Management and Information System course in college. During work in CIMB, he get a chance to be expose to IT where he was ask to make a power point for presentation which Microsoft Word not so famous during that time. He was learning how to make spreadsheet for financial modeling. During work in CIMB, he meet Azmi Ahmad which is become his business partner in Skali.
Azmi Ahmad is very diligent, meticulous and very concern about the welfare of staff. He also a very serious and strict about quality and had no time for small talk. His personality make Tengku Farith more close with Aimi Aizal Nasharuddin which was more his type. Aimi is fun abd easy going. After a year work with CIMB, Tengku Farith, Azmi and Aimi joined force to form a corporate advisory consultant called ACIF Resource which would later become one of the main shareholders of Skali.