Sam is the CEO of pitchIN, an Equity Crowdfunding (ECF) platform registered by the Securities Commission. In 2018, 75% of the funds raised on ECF in Malaysia was done on pitchIN. More information at www.equity.pitchin.my. Sam was also named FinTech’s 2018 Prominent Personality of the Year.
Shamsul Jafni Shafie
Founder & CEO, PitchIN
Council Member
Born in Johore Baru, Panchacharam Nalliah (aka Suhan Panchacharam to the Indian fans and Pansha in the national
film industry) has been an ardent movie fan since his day in memory. He had his first physical touch of a movie
projector at the age of four, when his father brought home a discarded hand wound 35mm projector powered by
torchlight and a roll of film for his four children to play with.
That crude introduction, in the later years prompted Pansha’s elder brother Sangarasivam along with a couple of
his friends start 16mm Mobile Cinema, screening Tamil movies in the estates near Johore Baru way back in 1962.
The films were often brought home for private viewing by the family and that gave Pansha on opportunity to operate
a real electrically operated Bell & Howell projector. This mug motivated Pansha to start a cinema club in school
(Sekolah Dato Jaffar) at the age of 16 through which he showed regular weekend shows for the students.
At the age of 17 with friends Ramasamy and Maniam, Pansha leased the local Capitol cinema to screen Tamil and
Hindi movies at an average of two days a month. It did not last as it was not highly profitable. Then he moved to
work as a field conductor in an estate in Kluang for about a year. Later we worked in travel agency for another year.
While in Kluang Pansha started a film distribution company ‘Malaysian Arts Corporation’ with his brother Sivam
and a few friends and bought a couple of Tamil movies and gave it on distribution basis to Singapore based company
called Indian Film Combine Pte Ltd (IFC). Though the movies did not fare well at the box office Pansha was given
the task of running the new office of IFC in Kuala Lumpur.
Panchacharam P Nalliah
President Film Producers Association of Malaysia
Council Member
Ramani graduated with a law degree from London with honours in 1994 and was
admitted as an advocate & solicitor of the High Court of Malaya in April 1997.
After specialising in the practice of intellectual property law for 3 years, he was
headhunted in 2000 to lead the Legal Affairs Department of the collective licensing
body for the recording industry, Public Performance Malaysia Sdn Bhd (‘PPM’).
He then went on to become the General Manager, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and
on 1 January 2014, the Group Chief Executive Officer of both PPM and the Recording
Industry Association of Malaysia (‘RIM’) where he led the Malaysian recording industry’s
priorities in legislative lobbying, international relations, foreign trade missions, civil
and criminal copyright enforcement against music piracy, organising copyright
awareness campaigns, furthering the development of the music business, hosting the
national awards for the music industry, and collective music licensing and royalty
distribution for recording labels, artistes and musicians. During his 17 years tenure,
PPM’s revenues grew from RM8 million per annum to RM53 million per annum.
Ramani Ramalingam
Music Industry Professional
Secretary
Alan Lim is the co-founder and CEO of MediaBanc Group; the biggest media monitoring and insights company in South-East-Asia since 1997. He fully exited the business in mid-2014 when the company was listed in the ASX as iSentia Group Ltd, formerly known as Sentia Media and before that Media Monitors.
Prior to MediaBanc Group, Alan, who obtained a BSC in Marketing and an MBA from the United States in 1987 worked in the advertising industry for close to 10-years at The Star media group in Kuala Lumpur, and at Asatsu, an international Japanese advertising agency in both Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.
An entrepreneur by heart, Alan Lim co-founded a market intelligence agency by the name of Pacific Forum (with offices in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo) and an advertising agency called Grandmont in Kuala Lumpur before his exit in 1997 to start MediaBanc Group.
Today, Alan Lim has moved into the significant second half of his life where he spends most of his time; he is the Principal Advisor for Nexea Angels, a venture builder, and he mentors & coaches many young Entrepreneurs in his spare time as part of his ‘giving back to society’. He also gives his time to MBAN (Malaysian Business Angel Network) as the President and participates as an investor in many startup companies in the SEA region.
