Social enterprises often begin with a burst of idealism and end with a spreadsheet problem. Pepper Labs, a Malaysian outfit that has spent the past decade experimenting with ways to improve livelihoods among the urban poor, has tried to stitch the two together with an organising idea: technology, it argues, should first and foremost increase dignity.
That deceptively simple principle has guided the firm’s evolution from a small food-based social enterprise into a curious hybrid, part training provider, part technology evangelist, part builder of digital-age co-operatives. Its current managing director, Thanaselan Rajendran who took the reins several months ago after years as a director, likes to describe Pepper Labs’ approach as “last-mile first”: start not with grand blueprints but with the constraints of those who are typically left out.
Malaysia, like many middle-income economies, congratulates itself on its high rate of internet adoption. But connectivity has not always translated into meaningful participation. Pepper Labs’ projects are an attempt to close that gap, not by giving away fish, as the well-worn proverb goes, but by ensuring there is a pond nearby and the tools to use it.
Building Kitchens and Communities In The Cloud
The best-known incarnation of this philosophy is Dapur Digital, which literally translates into “digital kitchens”. Conceived in the aftermath of the pandemic, when lockdowns wiped out informal incomes, the scheme turns underused spaces in low-cost housing blocks (PPRs) into shared, industry-standard cloud kitchens.
The initial accelerator programme taught unemployed residents how to use digital marketing tools to launch or expand micro-businesses. But participants pointed out an obvious flaw: you can learn to sell online, yet still be constrained by your own cramped kitchen. Dapur Digital was the answer.
Pepper Labs funds and fits out the kitchens, then trains micro-entrepreneurs in the less romantic but more vital parts of the trade: food handling certifications, pricing, operations, packaging, and how to navigate platforms like GrabFood and Foodpanda. Search-engine optimisation, once the preserve of corporate brands, is deployed to generate leads for budget catering and delivery services run from the kitchens.
The results are not eye-watering, but they are real. The first five kitchens, activated in 2024, have generated roughly RM2 million in sales across 15 months. The highest earners, those who treat the kitchen as a full-time venture, can reportedly reach RM10,000 or more.
More interesting than the numbers is the ecosystem that has grown around the kitchens. Each location is encouraged to develop a speciality — a signature sambal here, frozen foods there — to avoid the usual race to the bottom.
Some have layered on sewing classes or community workshops. Residents use the kitchens as social spaces for small ceremonies that would otherwise require hiring external venues. What started as an income-boosting project has become a subtle instrument of neighbourhood cohesion.
Scale has come quickly. From one experiment to five pilot kitchens, the initiative received a fillip when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced funding for 25 more in the 2025 budget. Ten of those are now running, bringing the total to 15 in Kuala Lumpur, with the rest planned for other states by 2026.
Pepper Labs does not merely build and walk away. Staff and a small army of volunteers check in daily, run weekly activities, and monitor operations digitally. Participants in the early cohorts even earned micro-credentials from Unitar University through a course co-designed with Pepper Labs, many setting foot on a campus for the first time. The experience, says the managing director, supplied not just skills but self-esteem.
Reinforcing Existing Digital Tools
Yet Pepper Labs is not content to be pigeonholed as a food-focused social enterprise. Digital tools have always been its underlying currency. The pandemic reinforced the lesson that no organisation, social or otherwise, should keep all its eggs in one basket.
So when the managing director stepped into the role, he made a bet on a force already reshaping white-collar work: artificial intelligence. Earlier this year Pepper Labs teamed up with Microsoft to run an AI outreach programme across the country. The target to reach 200,000 Malaysians in six months might have sounded fanciful. They ended up surpassing it, delivering awareness sessions to some 306,000 people. Around 35,000 completed certification.
If the numbers impress, the choice of audiences matters more. Pepper Labs deliberately sought out groups at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum: civil servants, university students, teachers but also community leaders, residents of public housing, and micro-entrepreneurs who would never otherwise encounter the technology beyond WhatsApp forwards.
The focus was resolutely practical. Students learned how research tools could condense the drudgery of compiling notes. Community organisers were shown how AI could help them produce posters, outreach videos or messages. Elderly residents, especially “uncles in their 60s and 70s”, as the MD puts it, discovered that AI could allow them not merely to share content but to create it.
For each audience, the curriculum is curated. AI for teachers differs from AI for civil servants. University cohorts may spend five days building research workflows; micro-entrepreneurs might learn how to standardise their marketing posts or automate repetitive tasks. Pepper Labs’ trainers hammer home the “art of the prompt”, but anchor sessions in case studies rather than hype.
The organisation has since gone a step further, developing AI solutions for the public sector alongside partners like Google and Microsoft. The ambition, the MD says, is to become a front runner in the space. Rhetoric is easy; the test will be whether the firm can maintain its social focus while wading into a lucrative new market.
Pepper Labs’ model knits the two. Public funding catalyses projects that would otherwise remain ideas. Partnerships with tech giants pay for large-scale outreach. The kitchens, after incubation, are meant to stand on their own, operated by the micro-entrepreneurs themselves. Pepper Labs remains a coach and monitor, not a landlord.
So far, at least, the early kitchens have lasted beyond a year. The first cohort’s two-year incubation phase is nearing its end. Whether Dapur Digital’s 30 projected kitchens will all survive the transition from grant-fuelled project to permanent fixture is uncertain. But the organisation’s willingness to adjust from food to training, from training to AI suggests it is wary of building castles on sand.
A Quiet Revolution
Pepper Labs offers a different angle: small-scale, iterative attempts to weave excluded groups into the digital economy on their own terms.
The work is not glamorous. It involves typhoid injections and food-handling courses, daily check-ins and troubleshooting, and endless workshops on packaging and pricing. It also involves persuading older residents that AI is not a threat but a tool and reminding younger ones that expertise lies not in using a chatbot, but in knowing what to ask of it.
If Pepper Labs’ wager pays off, the result will not be a sudden leap in GDP, but something subtler: communities a little more resilient, livelihoods a little more stable, and a digital landscape that feels less like a privilege and more like a commons.