A THREAD on the enterprising 31-year-old Good Foodie Media Sdn Bhd co-founder and CEO Nicholas Lim Pinn Yang on the X platform has garnered 1.2 million views in the span of less than 24 hours which alluded to the former’s claim as Southeast Asia’s #1 curator of food content on social media.
In a sharing by marketing and branding enthusiast Aidi Ezzhar (@aidi_ezzhar) after Pinn Yang spent two hours in the “Aps Cerita” podcast, it became clear that Good Foodie Media is the owner of all “Foodie” platform brands – from Penang Foodie, KL Foodie, Johor Foodie to Halal Foodie – and have even expanded their wings to Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Singapore and Japan.
Pinn Yang ni siapa? Banyak betul duit dia!
Mesti ini yang terdetik bila mana tengok video beliau berbagi bagi iPhone atau wang. Ramai sebenarnya masih tak tahu siapa beliau.
THREAD pic.twitter.com/HUGEKCrZNO
— Aidi Ezzhar (@aidi_ezzhar) July 24, 2024
“The beginning of his life was not as easy as it is now. Upon his return from Japan, his family lived in a flat in Penang,” narrated Aidi.
“His dad used to sell Hainanese Chicken Rice but without much success. He then traded various types of goods including multi-tools prior to selling wok (frying pan). It was from here that Pinn Yang gathered his experience in the world of business and marketing.”
While he was doing his internship at Tencent (Shenzen-based Chinese multinational technology conglomerate), Pinn Yang happened to land a role under the food segment as a foodie. It was then that Wechat (which is Tencent’s equivalent of WhatsApp) was in the midst of developing a food discovery app.
This enabled Pinn Yang to read all the data from Tencent regarding the foodie trait
“From hereon, he obtained inspiration and began to read the trend of our society on the foodie culture,” revealed Aidi. “While his peers were jollying and having fun, he embarked on a search for a side hustle.”
This was when Pinn Yang started to buy the Penang Foodie domain and that of other Foodies. Since he has a far-reaching vision in this field, it would be best to reserve the domain first.
After working with Tencent, Pinn Yang returned to Penang and worked with one digital marketing agency during which he built Penang Foodie with his girlfriend and sister on a part-time basis.
“He worked full-time with the agency as her developed Penang Foodie on a part-time basis. At first, he focused on writing or a food blog where he generated profit from Google AdSense,” shared Aidi.
“In the beginning, he targeted at only putting food on the table every day. However, he was able to generate up to US$100 daily.”
But Pinn Yang was very diligent in observing the latest trends. That also happened to be the age when video began to gain popularity on social media. So, they started to focus on video and this has been instrumental for the success of the Foodie platform till today.
“They started to take in clients with a charge rate of 50 sen per day. Over time, the charge increased to three to four figures. This was when they started expanding to Kuala Lumpur and Johor after getting investment from an angel investor who is also one of their clients,” noted Aidi.
From a company valued at RM2 mil during the days of angel investor to RM14 mil, Aidi projected that the value of Good Foodie Media value could perhaps reached RM100 mil by now.
“After switching its status to Sdn Bhd some time back, their revenue rose to RM1.9 mil and five years down the road, it spiralled to RM20 mil a year. Now they already have 70 full-time editors under Good Foodie Media,” enthused Aidi.
“If you want to know, Byran Loo who is the owner of Tealive is also one of their investors as he has acquired a stake in Good Foodie Media (in May 2022). They are now starting to expand into new sectors which are Travel Rookie and Car Buddie.” – July 25, 2024
Images credit: pinnyang/Instagram
