I grew up in a famous coffee town called chickmagalur in India as my dad was involved in the coffee business and I am a 5th generation Coffee grower. The first coffee outside of Arabia was first brought to this town by Baba Budan a 16th-century Sufi, revered by both Muslims and Hindus, whose shrine is at Baba Budangiri, Chikkamagalur, Karnataka, India
I first visited Malaysia as a tourist in 2012 after having worked with multinationals across Phillipines, India, Oman and having graduated with a Masters degree from Australia. I quit my job in the Philliines with a multinational called Accenture as the focus was on performance parameters and it was stifling.
Its that strange feeling you get when your body, mind and soul feel in harmony at a place. I liked the feeling that Kuala Lumpur is one of the few cities in the world that has large number of beautiful waterfalls and hills within a 1 hr drive and being a hiker and nature lover I felt to be able to do this I should set up something of my own to sustain myself here. So we approached the govt departments.
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I joined 2 environmentally friendly and very professional hiking groups. The energy that climbing generates within yourself, in addition to the health benefits, the opportunity to meet people of diverse backgrounds yet we can all relate and hiking binds us together. It could be camping by a river or just making coffee on a portable stove in a forest.
So we approached the govt departments like agency innovasi Malaysia, MIDA, etc and found them to be extremely encouraging of green technology. I had not seen this in other parts of the word. Then slowly made several trips as a tourist and found the people wonderful I never felt like a foreigner here as I do in other countries and this made me stick on.
Hiking tests all aspects of you and yet it is a community that is environmentally friendly and also caring of fellow hikers as they know the risks associated with hiking mountains.
Travel enlightens me. Its experiantial learning that is critical . I sometimes look at best practices in green and processes followed at the countries i travel to broaden my horizon.
eg in Malaysian rural organic farms i learnt from a Malaysian organic farmer how he uses the techniques of bokashi and panchagaya to organically improve quality of soil. In April 2014 at Bandar Muadzam shah in Pahang , It’s a small town located n the district of Rompin. This was a project for the orang asli using solar lights as well as solar charging for the mobile phones. The orang asli community would spend 1 ringitt and lots of fuel to go to the towns to get their mobile phones charged. So together with Panasonics solar division I bought their portable solar lights and chargers and decided to do a trial project to help the community who had no electricity. We teamed up with passionate volunteers who have been contributing their time , funds and building concrete homes from the original wooden shacks. They also help in education and health care for the indigenous people. So our solar lights I Sponsored were also used at the classroom.
I wanted to discover rural parts of Malaysia and was surprised to see that a developed country in its rural parts had no electricity . So me and my business partners decided to put our skills to make a difference. My focus right now is in Agriculture using Artificial intelligence working with large plantations as well as small from acuaponics, poultry farmers, organic farmers, acquaculture to embrace digitization and green technology as a way to produce environmentally friendly output for the wellness of end consumers. Making the world healthy through eating healthy and also protecting nature by healthy practices. Reducing use of pesticides, excess water all through a monitoring sytem
I continue to enjoy each and every day in Malaysia and now having joined the expat groups I am experiencing new activities pickleball, Padel, etc.. and I am enriched by meeting people from all over the world.
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