Family Business
Family Transcends Business
“ Our vision is to empower NextGen of family business leaders to sustain and elevate their heirloom enterprises, philosophy and family legacy to positively impact our world economically and socially. ”
Founders of Innovatif+, Mei Tan, and her sister Li Tan, are both modern and visionary entrepreneurs who emerged as the 2nd generation of Asia Green Group – a family owned corporation in the real estate and timber industries. Despite being able to hold their own in any field of endeavor, they found it tough to juggle between thriving in their own rights and upkeeping their family legacy. They have attempted and successfully launched their own ventures and brands, stamped their marks and scaled various heights on multiple business environments, yet it has proven to be more than a challenge to step out of their iconic father’s shadow. After a few oversights and misjudgments, they finally understood, and readily embraced the true meaning of “Family Business” – the importance and value of family that transcend any magnitude a business could carry.
It soon came to light that many of their peers and business counterparts were going through similarly indistinguishable journeys, sharing comparable fate and parallel sets of values. After rounds of discussions and deliberations with several of their close confederates who were respected entrepreneurs and industrial leaders in their own right, Mei Tan and Li Tan decided to start this platform “Innovatif+” to provide the NextGen, the so called next generation communities, a positive and secure haven to advocate, share and converge the paths of like-minded people from similar backgrounds.
Although it might be oblivious to some, Family-owned businesses are indeed some of the most significant economic contributors across the globe. The Family Firm Institute (FFI) estimates that family enterprises comprise around two-thirds of all businesses, generating between 70 and 90% of the global GDP, and are responsible for at least half of the workforce globally. These numbers are even more pronounced in Asia, where small and medium-sized family-owned enterprises are extremely common.
Being in the position to shoulder that responsibility and keep the family flag flying high, the successors must take premeasurements in safeguard the business, the family legacy, and to ensure its continuous prosperity. Be they business models, evolution of technology, consumer behavior, or new ventures and opportunities, things do inevitably change as the world progresses. Taking into account that change is the only constant in this world, trailblazers like us ought to be prepared and well-equipped with the right knowledge, mindset and attitude to take the “traditional” business by the horns and be bold enough to adopt and execute necessary changes.
Innovatif+ is a channel perfectly tailor-made for the next generation of family business leaders to explore and learn on new business frontiers. This platform is capable of widening perspectives, helping them understand and preserve the core values, while expanding their business outreach and investment opportunities. We are also hopeful that it could foster global collaboration, initiating a chain of ideas exchange, sharing of valuable resources, and even better – new friendships being formed. This could serve as an additional support system above and beyond your currently possession.
Our Mission Innovatif+
Our mission is to empower NextGen Leaders with sustainable knowledge and tools, so that they can build a sustainable business to go global. All of these is achievable through events like INNOVATIF+, various services and the workshops we provide.
Our Founders
Meeyydz (Mei) Tan
Mei Tan is the 2nd generation CEO and Director of Asia Green Group – a Property Development and Timber Milling & Manufacturing company. Mei kickstarted her career serving a brief stint as a Graphic Interactive Designer with MTV International in NYC before returning to her hometown, Malaysia to ply her trade. She is managing the Asia Green Group’s Property Development Companies with assets and projects under development totaling up to a combined gross development value (GDV) of over USD $700 million.
Having to succeed a brick and mortar business of over a decade, as well as her venture into Co-Working Space as mentor and investor, Mei soon came to realize that innovation would always be the key in driving business growth. That impetus in her to grind out solutions for every problem arise has fed her passion to help and empower more NextGen of family business leaders to discover new and progressive methods to further build on their businesses and legacies. She then founded the Asia Innovative Agency, and soon proceeded to launch Innovatif+ that has its influence spans across Asia.
Besides holding her own as a dynamic entrepreneur, Mei is also a TEDx Speaker and an award-winning CEO. Some of the prominent and most coveted awards under her belt were Women Of The Future Awards S.E Asia, Top CEO Award, Top 100 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs Award, Top 30 JCI Creative Young Entrepreneur Award, InPenang Emerging Entrepreneur Award, and EZ Emerging Entrepreneur award and High Flyer award.
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Li Tan
Li Tan, also known as Li Hua Tan, started her career in banking with Citigroup as a Financial Analyst in Los Angeles and New York City. More than two years later, she moved to Malaysia and managed a real estate firm with assets under development totaling up to a combined gross development value (GDV) of over USD $450 million.
By 2014, Li Tan had already managed multiple real estate development projects before becoming a founding partner in the world’s first company that invests in vintage and rare single malt whiskies with private equity fund. That fund began with USD $12 million, and it has doubled since (based on an independent valuation). With these encouraging results, she has, together with her business partners, invested further into this industry.
On top of her own ventures, she has also been assigned to restructure and modernize her family businesses and family office. With her foresight and experience, she’s mandated to prepare and equip the company and its employees with the best knowledge and skill sets to face major business challenges that are transnational in nature and trans-institutional in solution.
Dr Melissa Foo
Dr Melissa Foo is the Head of Sunway iLabs Ventures, where she works with startups to co-create solutions for a sustainable future, leveraging on the network and
resources of Sunway Group and Sunway University. As an angel investor, impact investor and Vice President of the Malaysian Business Angel Network (MBAN), she is also actively involved in early-stage investments and innovation across sectors such as Health, Education, Fintech, Food & Agritech, Smart Cities, Retail Tech and Social Impact.
Melissa has worked with the Malaysian government Prime Minister’s Department, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation, in various roles managing
capacity-building and accelerators for startups, promoting corporate innovation programmes, and designing and implementing frameworks and funding models for technopreneurs and social impact finance. Some of her highlights include generating 3x social return to the government through Social Impact Bonds, establishing partnerships with 25 Malaysian corporations for entrepreneurship involvement, and managing ~US$400M in deal flow for an entrepreneurship fund. She is passionate about innovation and its real-world applications into industry. Her diverse experience enables her to bridge gaps in communication and connect dots between traditional business processes and advanced technologies.
Melissa received an MBA from Columbia Business School with a dual-concentration in Family Enterprise Management & Impact Investing. Melissa also serves on the board of her family healthcare company based in Malaysia, where she successfully spearheaded multiple initiatives such as digitization of health records and dental imaging, as well as establishing a corporate social responsibility programme. Prior to that, she obtained her dental qualifications from the University of Melbourne and was attached to the Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Department of Hospital Sungai Buloh, specializing in trauma and facial reconstruction. When she is not identifying the next big thing in impact and innovation, she is passionate about travel, meeting people, making connections and giving. Her philanthropic work with the family organization serves underprivileged communities across Southeast Asia.
Evelyn Chew
Being raised up by a strict Asian family, Evelyn was a very timid, fearful, dependent girl. After going through a near-death experience in Maldive, she had a new perspective about life. She decided to live a life with courage and love to create positive impacts to build a legacy.
Inspired by her dad’s success, she took up the challenge to join in the steel industry as the 2nd Gen of her family business to continue the legacy. Evelyn represents Panaflo Controls under Pantech Group, which specializes in steel pipes, valves, fittings for use in the oil and gas and energy markets in Singapore and international markets.
Sports is Evelyn’s passion. She believes that sports is the metaphor of life as it gives her the value of confidence, courage and connection to herself and people around her. Hence, she wants to share these great values with more people. Evelyn started her own sports media and marketing business – Ministry of Adventure (MOA) upon her graduation at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). MOA is a full-service sports and entertainment platforms that connect sports enthusiasts and sports and lifestyle businessess. During the Covid year, she incorporated MOA Digital Media to help sports and lifestyle companies to increase their visibilities and to attract their paid clients and create an impact to the world, via experiential video production, digital marketing and hybrid events solutions.
Evelyn is also a High Flyer Asia Ambassador which she helps to connect business owners in 17 Asia’s countries. She is one of the 50 young Malaysians to be selected as the awardees of the High Flyer Award – the most stylish business award in Malaysia in 2019.
Evelyn is a strong believer in building a legacy of sustainable business to create positive impacts on society. Her life mission is to create positive impacts to at least a million people’s lives.
Collaborative Partners
We are ever ready to welcome potential collaborative partners that share similar ideology and passion to serve our community.
