Meet Daniel Teoh Beng Huat, Co-Founder and CEO of HariWang

Please provide your full name and title. 

  • Daniel Teoh Beng Huat, Co-Founder and CEO of HariWang

Share with us on what you do and what inspired you to start the business. 

  • I started my career in banking and decided to set up our own recruitment agency with my partner prior to the pandemic. During the pandemic, we started working closely with gig economy partners as most corporations were not hiring due to the uncertainty in the market.
  • It was during this time that we had workers working with us who had constant financial difficulties and required frequent cash advances for emergencies or just to make daily ends meet. This inspired us to start up Peopleperks and to launch HariWang for our employees and later for some of our clients.

What has the journey been like?

  • Even though HariWang is still very new, the journey over the past 10 months has been very interesting and exciting. As Earn Wages Access (EWA) is still very new in Malaysia, many local businesses have not been exposed to this culture and are very interested to learn how this can improve or support their businesses in the long run.
  • We were also given the opportunity to share the whole idea and were selected to join the MyStartup Pre-Accelerator by MOSTI.

Biggest achievement and what is one regret that you wish you had or had not done?

  • Over the past year it has been a great achievement to be recognized and acknowledged by many parties on the concept of HariWang and how it has really helped the employees. I think the only regret is that why we can scale this faster.

Where do you see yourself in the next 1 year?

  • HariWang will be looking at a few big projects this year and will focus on growing the other pillars that we have planned. (i.e. Stretching your dollar, Insurance for everyone etc.)

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

  • I really do wish to see HariWang being able to serve more people across Asia.

What keeps you going to keep running the business? 

  • Many people may see HariWang as just an advance salary platform, but I see it very differently. The advances that we provide today could feed mouths or get someone out of a very difficult position. This is to also support not only the B40 but also the M40 in Malaysia today. In the long run, also provides the unbanked B40 populations an opportunity to get their hands on financial products.

What is one local startup you would like to work together with and why?

  • We are currently working with a few local and foreign startups already, so I would not say there is any one particular startup that I would love to work with but we are always open to collaborating with partners.

Why should investors invest in your startup? 

  • I think for most investors, there are a few things that they will always look for prior to investing in any company other than their potential returns. For Peopleperks, I think other than providing attractive returns we are focused on driving ESG for cooperates today. Focusing on helping companies to have a stronger social aspect.

HariWang is is a member of 25 Startups, a startup incubator with presence in Sarawak, Penang, Cyberjaya and Johor.

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