An Ace Up Her Sleeve – Natalie Sit of Acestar shares her vision of shaking up Malaysia’s IT services industry

Would it be cheeky to suggest that if Natalie Sit ever fancies a career change, she has a solid backup option in the F&B industry? We’re discussing her earliest years, which stretch all the way back to her childhood in Ipoh, when she hadn’t even set her sights on Malaysia’s IT industry yet. “I grew up in a very small town called Pasir Pinji, which was really considered a kampung at the time,” she says. “My parents ran a stall selling wonton noodles, so when I was eight years old, I’d already started helping my mother to make the dumplings. I can still make perfect wontons—the shape of every dumpling is exactly the same!”

Still, there’s hardly any reason for Sit to start diversifying just yet. Not when Acestar Sdn. Bhd., the ICT company that she’s been running since 2008, is looking at last year’s estimated turnover of RM42 million – and all this, mind you, with a team of only 16 staff. But even a quick conversation with Sit will reveal exactly why Acestar has shot to success as an IT supplies, services, and solutions provider, delivering – among other things—over 25,000 seats of Adobe Creative Cloud licenses within Malaysia. She’s focused, she’s clear about what and who her target markets are, and she’s incredibly determined—largely because, as she explains, she knows exactly what it’s like to climb a ladder starting from the lowest rung.

THE HARD SELL

Hunger is something that Sit speaks of both literally and figuratively in reference to her upbringing, which certainly shaped her into who she is today. It wasn’t just that she had to save up enough pocket money to buy her own toys or that the only living space that she, her parents, and her brother – a family of four – had was one small room. “We were staying with my grandparents, and there were about three families all squeezed into one house. When you’re living in these sorts of conditions, it really made me very hungry.

“That hunger came from wanting to give my parents a better life. I didn’t want to see them suffering or lying in poverty, but at the time, I was still young. It became my motivation: it was about working hard to achieve what I wanted.” As a teenager in secondary school, she would spend her holidays working as a shopping promoter, as well as helping her parents at their stall. (“You need to promote those wonton noodles!” Sit laughs.) This, as it turned out, provided an ample training ground for her sales and communication skills, which was what made her stand out when she got her first job at a small IT firm in Ipoh as an administration clerk.

“I didn’t know my own potential until my first boss discovered it, so he kept encouraging me go into Sales. Because of my background and my previous work experience, it worked out well and I became one of the company’s top salespeople extremely quickly.” Was there a method to her meteoric rise? “I really believed in the product I was selling. If you don’t believe in your product or service, it’s very difficult for your customer to believe in it too. That’s the most important thing. Secondly, I wouldn’t give up until I’d sold it to someone I wanted to sell to. If I couldn’t make a sale at first, I’d find another time to sell. To me, you shouldn’t give up, and you can’t settle.”

Over the seven-year period that Sit was with the company, she found that her forte lay in providing IT solutions and services to those in the Education sector, where she could offer help as an IT services consultant to lecturers in local universities. “The culture that we have in Malaysia is that lecturers have to source for the type of technology they want, which is often not their expertise. Lecturers are supposed to teach their students, but they’re expected to decide what kind of equipment they need, what goes into their labs, the specifications, the software, the solutions. That’s where people like me come in: we help them to come up with proposals for what they need in order to be able to teach.”

In barely any time at all, she was earning a five-figure income, and at the age of 23, she purchased her first house in Ipoh. “It wasn’t very expensive,” she says modestly, “But it was something big for me.” In 2007, Sit had even made enough to head to the United States for six months, where she lived out her version of the American dream in New York City, working in a data entry job before adhering to her family-oriented instincts and returning to Malaysia to look after her parents. It wasn’t the step down in pace that one might imagine, she assures me: “Most people in New York are second-generation immigrants who just want a comfortable job and life, so they don’t fight for their careers. I have to tell you, Malaysia has the most aggressive working culture in comparison.” Of course, with Sit’s drive, it certainly wasn’t going to make her take a step backwards.

SIT DOWN, STAND UP

Having spent nearly 30 years in Ipoh, Sit felt that Kuala Lumpur would be the ideal place to start her own business, where it was fast-paced enough to keep her moving but not too far removed from her parents. Serendipitously, her former employer expressed an interest in setting up a company in the Malaysian capital, so Sit agreed to see it through while he came in as an investor. “I was very confident at the time,” she notes, recalling her first steps as the head of Acestar. “I knew I was good at Sales and I’d attracted a lot of recognition within the IT industry at a young age. I’m also a realistic person, and when I started the company, I didn’t have a five-year plan. “

I wanted to break even in our first year – that was a clear goal – and I had to figure out how to achieve it. I knew I had to get a lot of sales to do that, so I went straight to the Education and Commercial industries that I was familiar with, especially customers who’d known me from before. I went as deep as I could by approaching them to get their business and earn profits from projects and regular orders.” With just two staff in Acestar’s team – a receptionist and a technician to provide customer support – the weight of running the company and bringing in around RM30,000 each month fell almost entirely on Sit’s shoulders.

“It was definitely stressful. When someone trusts, invests, and believes in me, I don’t want to disappoint them. I wanted to be responsible to my partners and ensuring they’d get their money’s worth, so this idea that I couldn’t fail was a huge motivation. I thought I could manage everything because I’d been a top salesperson, but when it comes to business, it’s different,” she say evenly. “It’s not just about sales – it’s about your leadership, too. I thought I could do everything by myself to achieve what I wanted, but when it came to the people surrounding me, I hadn’t empowered them. My staff couldn’t see what my vision was and they treated what they were doing as ‘just’ a job.”

The demands of multitasking and work-related stress began to affect Sit, which led to her taking long breaks to recuperate – and when she returned to Acestar after her second two-month absence, she found her team had resigned en masse. Someone of less determined character might have admitted defeat and cut their losses, but Sit dug her heels in and – with the aid of her business partner, a good friend, and her now-husband – set about restructuring the company and expanding it by working with strategic partners. “I almost gave up, but I knew I wouldn’t. Running away from my problems and choosing to fail would risk becoming a habit in the future, and I wouldn’t be able to expect myself to achieve anything after that. I’d be giving up my entire life.

“I decided to face my problems, stand up, and build myself back up again. Coming back again, my mentality and mindset were different. I knew the mistakes I’d made before, and I knew not to repeat them in the future.” A lot of it, she readily admits, had to do with transforming herself from a self-employed business owner into a good leader. “It was the most important thing I needed to do. Acestar had to have a team of people to drive the company forward. What shapes good leaders is that you have to make strong decisions, and dare to do so. You have to live life on your own terms, rather than being afraid of making a decision. And once you make it, you don’t settle and you don’t give up.”

THE BRIGHTEST STAR

It’s now been just over a decade since Sit established Acestar, and her team has swelled considerably – as have the products and services that the company offers its customers. The list is comprehensive: they handle CRM (customer relationship management) software development, cloud infrastructure, virtual learning and meeting platforms, content management, marketing cloud services, hotdesking and book space solutions, and even virtual reality solutions. “I’m definitely proud of our cloud services and licensing – we’re good at that,” she nods, referring to Acestar’s status as a Platinum Partner for Adobe’s Creative Cloud license, which assists the creative industries with design, production, and animation.

With an eye on SMEs – another target market of particular interest – Sit has also developed her own software, SalesLive, a sales management application she believes can help upscale a business to the next level. “Over 70 percent of SMEs still use Excel or Word files for their sales activities, making it difficult to upscale their businesses and using up all of their energy. That’s why most SMEs find it difficult to last for more than five years, or can’t scale their businesses after a decade. But technology, especially digital tools, can help us increase productivity. I developed SalesLive for my own use, and when we implemented it in Acestar, our sales grew by 80 percent in the same fiscal year.

“Sales CRM isn’t anything new, but the selling point of our software is that it’s not complicated to use: your staff can use it, and it’s easy for you to read and access all the data. I’ve always believed simplicity is the key to success. We have one slogan for our customers: ‘Let us take care of your IT, because you have better things to do’. Their focus should fall on adding value to their business and addressing their customers’ issues, rather than concentrating on technology to solve problems – that should be our responsibility.” Having spent the past 11 years building Acestar’s brand and nurturing close relationships with customers, Sit’s gaze has begun to travel beyond Malaysia.

“The next five years will be more about expanding the company. I’ve always believe that Malaysian companies and Malaysian-born entrepreneurs are very capable of diversifying, and if we can do well in Malaysia, we can also go outside of it. As Acestar’s CEO, I’ve always wanted to bring the brand overseas, and we’ve already started to look at working with strategic partners across Southeast Asia.” With everything that’s going on – the company’s dual focus on the Education and Enterprise sectors, organising the ACA (Adobe Certified Associate) Championship Malaysia for the fourth year running, and bringing in international master trainers to handle creative multimedia workshops – has Sit managed to negotiate the tricky work-life balancing act a little better?

“It’s still tiring because I don’t have much time for myself,” replies the mother of two, who adds that she’s able to slip some hot yoga sessions and drum-playing (she’s got a drum kit at home) into her schedule. “But I’ve learned that it’s worth working so hard, because I can spend quality time with my family. It’s not always about ‘you’ – there will be no perfect moments. You should treat every moment as a special one. The next day, a problem might come up that I have to fix, so it’s not about your situation in life. It’s about the decision you make at that moment, and you should be grateful for everything you have – even the problems that come your way.”

TEXT RENYI LIM
ART DIRECTION AUDREY LIM
PHOTOGRAPHY GERALD GOH/ WALAWALA PICTURES
PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT ASYRAF RAHMAN