Mr Edmund Santhara has persevered through humble beginnings of growing up in a rubber estate, completing his MBA in Marketing and Business Administration in 1998. Having excelled as a marketing prodigy for several prestigious colleges, Edmund took the challenge of investing in Masterskill, becoming its CEO in 2005. Masterskill is a school for Nursing and Allied Health education which includes courses in pharmacy, physiotherapy and lab technology.

Within 2 years, he insightfully and rapidly transformed Masterskill by using various innovative measures including convincing relevant authorities to raise enrolment fee limits imposed, procuring 100% study loans from various funds, revolutionizing the nursing and healthcare educational system and negotiating arrangements for utilizing over 40 hospitals as training grounds. All successfully achieved despite Edmund coming from an unrelated academic background. Enrolment has phenomenally surged to 6,000 students from 250 prior to 2005. Today, Masterskill is one of the largest institutions of its kind in South East Asia and has the distinction of having achieved 100% employability for all its graduates, with students booked by private and public hospitals in advance of graduation both locally and overseas. @ Sept 07

Mr Nigel Lee Siew Tat of TechnoDex Berhad was named the Technology Category Award recipient. Mr Nigel Lee helped found what had become TechnoDex in 2001. In 2003, he was appointed CEO and 3 years later the company was listed on MESDAQ with operations in Malaysia, China and Vietnam.

TechnoDex's competitive niche is in instilling engineering practices to the traditional software development processes with the objective to strengthen and preserve knowledge and to create a business powered by technology. This is a breakthrough to the traditional license-based ICT business model. Nigel believes that the future of ICT services is in commoditization and affordability to all levels of the business community.

Under Nigel's leadership, TechnoDex has embraced open source technology with the development of TechnoDex® Platform that allows software suites to be easily developed and customized via mix-and-match software applications and is Malaysia's first home-grown open source technology platform. Nigel believes in allowing his team to excel through their imagination and excellence. Each member is given the opportunity to build and own their dream with the support and encouragement from management. This innovative approach to software development has been recognized in the industry with the company conferred the 2005 MSC-Apicta Merit Award for the Best Application and Infrastructure Tools Category. @ Sept 07

Y Bhg Datin Alicia Tan Kuay Fong of TA Enterprise Berhad was proudly announced as the recipient of the Women's Category award. Y Bhg Datin Alicia Tan has successfully nurtured, developed and transformed TA Enterprise, a stock-broking based company, into a diversified conglomerate with businesses in asset management, unit trust management, futures and derivatives trading, credit and lending, hotel operations and property development and management investments spanning Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Indonesia.

Under Datin Alicia's leadership, TA Enterprise became the first stockbroking company in Malaysia to be listed on the Malaysian stock exchange and is currently one of the top retail stockbrokers in the country.

Datin Alicia's foresight led to the diversification of TA Enterprise's operations to avoid being dependent on a single income stream type or country. As such, TA Enterprise turned its focus on the property development industry where it pioneered the concept of "inspired homes" and became a leader by setting the pricing and concept benchmarks for inspired homes. TA Enterprise is in the enviable position of being one of the largest holders of yet to be developed land banks in the KLCC area which has tremendous potential.

Datin Alicia is very driven and passionate in what she does and strives for excellence in all her corporate and business undertakings. @ Sept 07

Y Bhg Dato' Haji Ameer Ali Mydin obtained his Masters Degree in International Management from the United States. In 1989, he left a budding career in banking to orchestrate the turnaround of his father's small retail and wholesale business then operating in the East Coast by opening a store in Kuala Lumpur. Since then, Dato' Ameer has evolved Mydin into a behemoth of 23 emporiums, 2 hypermarkets, 1 supermarket and 5 convenience stores with a significant presence in the Klang Valley. Dato' Ameer has driven the enterprise into head on competition with large foreign players and has emerged as one of the largest in terms of retail trade among hypermarkets in Malaysia - an achievement in itself for a homegrown business.

With a value proposition of benefiting communities through highly competitive pricing, largely through direct purchasing from manufacturers rather than middlemen, Mydin has passed enormous cost savings on to its wholesale, retail and household customers. Many small retail customers have survived and developed by leveraging on Mydin's purchasing strategies. It also operates in territories hitherto shunned by most major competitors.

Dato' Ameer contributes significantly to the poor and to natural disaster victims and has aided many aspiring entrepreneurs. @ Sept 07