The CARPET Gang
You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don't have the will and drive to pull it off and commercialise it, your idea will never take shape. And if its guts and enthusiasm you need, then this group of five young men has it brimming to the top.
Chew Chee Ming, 21, Muhammad Anis Ur Rehman, 23, Muhammad Waqas, 24, Rizwan Mehmood, 22, and Heng Zeng Aun, 23, make up the CARPET Gang.
CARPET (Car License Plate Extraction and Recognition Techology) is an image processing technology that is used to identify vehicles by their license plate. It can be used in applications such as at parking decks, toll booths and even border control.
"How many times have people lost their parking tickets at shopping malls? Well, this technology can solve that problem by not having a ticket in the first place," smiles Rizwan.
The team has also pledged that they will be developing the technology themselves instead of purchasing different technologies and assembling it to form the solution. This will give them the ability to make their solution for a wide variety of applications.
They all agree that the idea isn't exactly ground-breaking like a cure for cancer, but they are more than confident that there will be a market, in Malaysia, and globally.
"In two years, we'll have control of Malaysia, and in five years, the region and the world. Oh, and we'll be rich too!" says the enthusiastic Anis.
This is the enthusiastic attitude that convinced the Cradle team to offer the CARPET Gang the CIP Grant. According to Chee Ming, applying for the grant was surprisingly easy.
"We filled in the online application form and submitted it with 23 seconds left to the deadline of the second batch," he laughs.
All five agree that Cradle has given them an opportunity which would not have been available otherwise. Unlike other venture capitalists, Cradle does not see financial returns as a success. What they aim to achieve is a professional entrepreneur community in Malaysia.
"Before, we were just a bunch of students. Now that Cradle has come into the picture, other organisations are starting to pay attention too," says Waqas and Zeng Aun about potential investors and partners.
But enthusiasm aside, this group has the credentials to back it up. All five are former or current students of Asia-Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT). And all are also employees of the organisation's Research and Development wing where they do research on an array of fields such as image processing, artificial intelligence, neural networks and even IT strategy planning. Even at such a young age the team has almost 20 years collective industry experience.
"We are IT experts and not businessmen. Cradle knows this and makes the application process very simple. With their help, we are able to concentrate more on what we do best, which is developing technology," says Rizwan.
Go to CARPET website.
