AI Weekly Malaysia

Back to items Summaries

Rickson Goh shows how you deal with a pandemic

ID

2064

Status

new

Published

20 Aug 2021, 6:58 AM

Fetched

27 Jun 2026, 8:24 PM

Provider

Digital News Asia

Category

malaysia-tech

Original URL

https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/startups/rickson-goh-shows-how-you-deal-pandemic

Source URL

https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/rss.xml

Excerpt

Tourplus CEO embodies founder hustle, with keen eye for opportunity Founders have the highest responsibility, must exude optimism & hope If you want to look at how well startup founders in Malaysia have coped with the Covid-19 pandemic, few have acquitted themselves as well as Rickson Goh, the soft spoken founder of travel tech startup, Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd. Not only did he manage to raise eyebrows in the ecosystem with a successful US$1 million seed capital fund raise last October, in the midst of a brutal standstill of the tourism market in Malaysia, but he has gone on to build some partnerships that will position his travel tech startup quite nicely when the tourism rebound happens. Plus, he has also started talking to investors on raising his next round as he projects revenue for 2021 to hit US$1.65 million (RM7 million) – almost none of it coming from travel. So, what is he smoking and what is he spiking in his teh tarik? Turns out it is nothing more than founder hustle and a keen eye for opportunity. Cuts win-win deal with Tourism Selangor Last week, Tourplus issued a straightforward press release announcing that it had partnered with Tourism Selangor to build a mobile app for the state agency, which had no mobile app before this. But the real story here is that Tourplus has entered into a 50:50 profit share agreement with Tourism Selangor for any sales that come through the app, called Go Selangor. Even better, the state agency will be encouraging all travel related suppliers in its database to start digitalising their operations, introducing Tourplus to those who are interested (although this is not an exclusive arrangement). As Rickson notes, most of these travel players are small companies and would have been near impossible for Tourplus to get into. Instead, now it gets a credible state agency to make the introduction. “We expect the app will go live in Oct 2021,” says Rickson. “Tourism Selangor will endorse and recommend the operators to us, Tourplus will discuss commercial arrangements and setup in the app, operate and do the payout, etc,” he explains. Go Selangor will be the official travel app for the state government as Selangor doubles efforts to help the travel ecosystem to be ready for the post-pandemic travel rebound. A key part of the efforts to get ecosystem players, most of whom are SMEs, ready, is to encourage them to digitalise so that their travel packages, services and inventory can be added to Go Selangor. Rickson, who mooted the idea in March with endorsement by the Selangor Information Technology and Digital Economy Corp in July, believes this collaboration will help more rural operators or “hidden gem providers” that are not in the main stream platforms like Klook. It is also a sweet deal for Rickson who gets to add new inventory to his database while gearing himself for the post-pandemic rebound. The collaboration is the latest in a series of deals he has cut since his October fundraising