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.

An empathetic philanthropist, Edmund generously contributes scholarships and has introduced free physiotherapy facilities for the needy. @ Sept 07

Mr Ganesh Kumar Bangah ventured into the IT industry at the tender age of 15, providing IT training, IT software, web development as well as PC sales and services. Soon after, he co-founded a company which operated commercial internet-hosting infrastructure and cybercafs. In 2000, he co-developed an innovative business model for the global affiliation of cybercafs, the rapid success of which led to the listing of MOL Access Portal on the MESDAQ and made Ganesh the youngest CEO of a listed company in Malaysia.

Today, MOL Access Portal's affiliation programme engages more than 15,000 internet-connected physical outlets in 182 countries. MOL Access Portal also operates numerous innovative e-commerce and internet programmes including online game portals, the MOLePoints payment system which enables non-credit card purchases online and a service that aggregates billings and payments for internet service providers. The company has received several prestigious awards for its products.

Always generous with his time for social community projects, Ganesh served as the project promoter for an initiative through which 1,200 rural students were trained in IT modules. @ Sept 07

Armed with an honours degree in Biochemistry and a passion for stem cell breakthroughs, Ms Sharon Low co-founded StemLife in 2001. StemLife is a pioneer in providing and storing umbilical cord blood-derived and adult stem cells in Malaysia and offers stem cell consultation and therapeutic applications in oncology, haematology and heart disease amongst others. Collaborations with medical specialists have provided cost efficient and personalized stem cell-based treatment as an alternative that has saved lives where conventional treatment had failed.

StemLife was granted MSC status in 2002 and was successfully listed on the MESDAQ in 2006. Sharon has persevered through various challenges including the lack of public awareness and misconceptions of stem cell technology, to create a local platform for stem cell technology development and for making it increasingly affordable. As a measure of its success and increasing international recognition, StemLife has recently been appointed by the Health Ministry of Khazakhstan as official consultant for the country's launch of a cord blood banking facility and has entered into a joint venture to develop a similar outfit in Thailand.

This focused and driven young entrepreneur has galvanized StemLife into one of the largest stem cell companies in South East Asia, winning several prestigious accolades in the process. @ Sept 07