Year to December 2025; canned drinks, chilled soya and water delivery
Outlets reached each month
61,000
23,500 by our own vans; the rest through 38 distributors
Data colleagues
74
Engineering, forecasting, data quality, field systems and data protection
A broader perspective.
Route-day demand forecasting / Transaction price and promotion data / Cash, QR and outlet credit records / Partner-held personal data / Retailer and distributor data sharing
In a cash-heavy beverage business I treat the van salesperson's handheld as the most important data system we own, and I design forecasts, prices and personal records to survive contact with it.
I am chief data officer of Telagawangi Beverages Berhad, a Klang-based maker of canned soya, barley and grass-jelly drinks, chilled soya milk and 19-litre drinking water for homes and offices. We are listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia, and the founding family holds 51 per cent. Revenue in 2025 was RM868 million. I lead 74 colleagues in data engineering, forecasting, data quality and data protection, report to the group managing director and present each quarter to the board's Audit and Risk Management Committee. I am not a director.
Most of our drinks reach people through sundry shops, coffee shops, mamak restaurants and petrol-station kiosks. Our 412 vans call on 23,500 of those outlets directly; 38 independent distributors serve the rest, including Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore. More than half of what a van collects is still cash. That shapes everything my team does. An order, a bonus carton, a price concession and a payment are all recorded on a handheld in a shop doorway, often by someone with thirty more calls to make before dark.
The three decisions on this site each moved data work closer to that doorway. We stopped forecasting individual shops and forecast route-days instead. We made salespeople record free goods and payment type at the counter, which slowed every call. We brought 52,000 households' delivery records out of distributors' spreadsheets and phones, and lost two distributors in the process. Each choice cost something that colleagues valued, and I say who disagreed and what we gave up.
Route-day forecasts replaced a shop-level ordering module
Chilled soya returned unsold fell from 4.1 to 2.3 per cent of loaded volume in 2024, about RM3.2 million. We declined a RM2.4 million shop-level module and accepted that vans would carry a planned buffer.
Every bonus carton now carries a scheme code
Recording free goods and payment type added about thirty-five seconds to each call. It revealed RM6.8 million of bonus stock given outside any approved scheme in six months, and approved schemes fell from 214 to 61.
Household water records left drivers' personal phones
By December 2025 all 52,000 distributor-served households were on one delivery system. Two distributors declined our terms, and our own crews took over 7,800 households at an extra RM2.10 a bottle.
Current focus
I am working with our modern-trade team on how much van-route data we should ever share with supermarket chains that also buy from our competitors, and on writing that boundary down before the next joint business plan rather than during it.
Conversations I welcome
I would consider one independent non-executive seat with a consumer, retail or distribution company in Malaysia or Singapore, allowing about twenty-four days a year, once my employer has agreed and the company's customer and supplier relationships with mine have been reviewed.
The leadership record
Trusted with consequential decisions.
Formation
Bachelor of science in statisticsKenarimas University · 1997
Nisha cost my salespeople two calls a day and said so in the paper instead of hiding it. When her first report pointed at individuals, she accepted my objection and redrew it by who had approved each scheme.
Hairul Azmi SulaimanHead of van sales, Telagawangi Beverages BerhadThe full record ↗
Contact
I would consider one independent non-executive seat with a consumer, retail or distribution company in Malaysia or Singapore, allowing about twenty-four days a year, once my employer has agreed and the company's customer and supplier relationships with mine have been reviewed.
