Conte Defee Marketing (M) Sdn. Bhd. (KOLs.Asia) | APEA - Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards
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MASTER ENTREPRENEUR CATEGORY

JASON ENG
CEO


Conte Defee Marketing (M) Sdn. Bhd. (KOLs.Asia)
www.kols.asia


Information about the Entrepreneur
CEO and Founder of KOLs.Asia, Jason Eng, spent most of his childhood growing up in Hong Kong and eventually returned to Kuala Lumpur for college. Jason has always attributed his father as his biggest role model and looks up to him especially in terms of the altruistic mindset and approach to situations and his work ethics.

Jason has always wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was young. Despite his passion for creativity and marketing, he took up accounting in his university days. After graduation, he had his first stint at one of the big four audits, KPMG. Three months in, he left and jumped right into marketing, operating as a brand executive for luxury fragrances and never looked back since. Fast forward a couple of years, he founded an events activation agency where he and a team expanded from on-ground activations to music festivals and concerts, which has now pivoted into #PopcultureMedia and KOLs.Asia.

Other Interesting Facts about the Entrepreneur
Jason is deeply passionate in everything tech, marketing and creative. His current passion is building the company and exploring new spaces within that niche. He has also recently picked up wushu. Besides personal activities, he also consistently contributes to common charity organizations like Da-Ai and UNICEF.

He always emphasizes the importance of being grateful for every situation, even the difficult ones. He embraces them with gratitude, especially the failures, for they are there to help him grow. Jason strives to be a kind and compassionate human being and reminds himself to always be altruistic, whenever possible as he feels karma will find its way back.
Company Achievements and Role of the Entrepreneur
The journey of running KOLs.Asia has been extremely rewarding as well as challenging for Jason. An ongoing challenge for him is to ensure that the company is constantly operating as a platform for the people in the team to grow, and to grow with happiness together with accountability. He emphasizes that this combination is of priority to him. The company brings in a lot of young talents, fresh grads, and Jason is keen on ensuring that they are happy to be there. Hence, he tries to be as generous as he possibly can. The team grew from having over 20 employees in 2020 to over 80 in 2022. Besides having a larger team, the company is also achieving consistent revenue growth since 2018 with 2x YoY revenue growth in 2021, achieving an 18 million turnover.

Seeing young talents coming into the team and rapidly rising to leadership roles in the company is rewarding for Jason. He actively works with other people in the team to educate internal teammates and clients on the rising need for better marketing strategies and approaches in this rapidly evolving web 2.0 (social media) landscape, and learning as the company grows and evolves into different stages. During a town hall session in January 2022, Jason shared to his team that the company’s theme for the year is scalability and quality. Additionally, to work on processes and models to allow the company to scale faster and more efficiently. At the same time, to further improve the quality of all aspects of the company: from campaign quality to client servicing, to internal team capabilities. Another aspect that Jason is actively looking into is incorporating tech into marketing, and that into the creative field.

Vision, Mission, & Future Plans
Jason’s vision for the company is to provide an endless, lucrative stream of opportunities for creators, to be a leader of the Creator Economy in Asia, and be a company that will last beyond a 100 years. The company is on a lifelong mission to empower creative talents. Besides giving young talents a space for them to grow in the industry and diving deeper into tech-based solutions, Jason is also looking at expanding across the SEA region. He sees the region as fast developing with a lot of potential. At the same time, he is also working on more tech-based solutions that will help the company in scaling the business across the region.

Jason hopes that in 5 years’ time, KOLs.Asia would be a platform with a large enough span across Asia that will position the company as one of the largest influencer/ creator platforms in Asia. To him, the company is really just starting out. There’s a whole lot more in the company’s pipeline that he is planning for in the coming 5, 10 even 20 years. Jason is building a company that lasts at least 100 years and beyond. So in that context, KOLs.Asia is only at its infancy stage.

Jason advises readers to pursue a dream that makes them happy where the joy will go beyond a short-term high that one often would get from material rewards.

MASTER ENTREPRENEUR CATEGORY

JASON ENG
CEO

Information about the Entrepreneur
CEO and Founder of KOLs.Asia, Jason Eng, spent most of his childhood growing up in Hong Kong and eventually returned to Kuala Lumpur for college. Jason has always attributed his father as his biggest role model and looks up to him especially in terms of the altruistic mindset and approach to situations and his work ethics.

Jason has always wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was young. Despite his passion for creativity and marketing, he took up accounting in his university days. After graduation, he had his first stint at one of the big four audits, KPMG. Three months in, he left and jumped right into marketing, operating as a brand executive for luxury fragrances and never looked back since. Fast forward a couple of years, he founded an events activation agency where he and a team expanded from on-ground activations to music festivals and concerts, which has now pivoted into #PopcultureMedia and KOLs.Asia.

Other Interesting Facts about the Entrepreneur
Jason is deeply passionate in everything tech, marketing and creative. His current passion is building the company and exploring new spaces within that niche. He has also recently picked up wushu. Besides personal activities, he also consistently contributes to common charity organizations like Da-Ai and UNICEF.

He always emphasizes the importance of being grateful for every situation, even the difficult ones. He embraces them with gratitude, especially the failures, for they are there to help him grow. Jason strives to be a kind and compassionate human being and reminds himself to always be altruistic, whenever possible as he feels karma will find its way back.

Conte Defee Marketing (M) Sdn. Bhd. (KOLs.Asia)
www.kols.asia


Company Achievements and Role of the Entrepreneur
The journey of running KOLs.Asia has been extremely rewarding as well as challenging for Jason. An ongoing challenge for him is to ensure that the company is constantly operating as a platform for the people in the team to grow, and to grow with happiness together with accountability. He emphasizes that this combination is of priority to him. The company brings in a lot of young talents, fresh grads, and Jason is keen on ensuring that they are happy to be there. Hence, he tries to be as generous as he possibly can. The team grew from having over 20 employees in 2020 to over 80 in 2022. Besides having a larger team, the company is also achieving consistent revenue growth since 2018 with 2x YoY revenue growth in 2021, achieving an 18 million turnover.

Seeing young talents coming into the team and rapidly rising to leadership roles in the company is rewarding for Jason. He actively works with other people in the team to educate internal teammates and clients on the rising need for better marketing strategies and approaches in this rapidly evolving web 2.0 (social media) landscape, and learning as the company grows and evolves into different stages. During a town hall session in January 2022, Jason shared to his team that the company’s theme for the year is scalability and quality. Additionally, to work on processes and models to allow the company to scale faster and more efficiently. At the same time, to further improve the quality of all aspects of the company: from campaign quality to client servicing, to internal team capabilities. Another aspect that Jason is actively looking into is incorporating tech into marketing, and that into the creative field.

Vision, Mission, & Future Plans
Jason’s vision for the company is to provide an endless, lucrative stream of opportunities for creators, to be a leader of the Creator Economy in Asia, and be a company that will last beyond a 100 years. The company is on a lifelong mission to empower creative talents. Besides giving young talents a space for them to grow in the industry and diving deeper into tech-based solutions, Jason is also looking at expanding across the SEA region. He sees the region as fast developing with a lot of potential. At the same time, he is also working on more tech-based solutions that will help the company in scaling the business across the region.

Jason hopes that in 5 years’ time, KOLs.Asia would be a platform with a large enough span across Asia that will position the company as one of the largest influencer/ creator platforms in Asia. To him, the company is really just starting out. There’s a whole lot more in the company’s pipeline that he is planning for in the coming 5, 10 even 20 years. Jason is building a company that lasts at least 100 years and beyond. So in that context, KOLs.Asia is only at its infancy stage.

Jason advises readers to pursue a dream that makes them happy where the joy will go beyond a short-term high that one often would get from material rewards.