Two Guys & A Cili Padi

MOHD Azhari Ahmad took a year to convince his business partner, Rizal Azim, to wear a tie, if not a suit, when they meet clients. In turn, Rizal took the same amount oftime convincing Azhari that in the advertising business, a clean shirt and jeans would do even for "formal" meetings.
"I don't feel at all comfortable if I am not dressed appropriately when meeting clients. Rizal, though, has no problems going to see them in shirt and jeans. He tries to drag me to meetings on days that I wear jeans but I simply refuse to go," Azhari says, immaculately decked out in a dark shirt and tailored pants and matching tie at the interview.
The two young men, both still single, helm the Caberawet Communications Sdn Bhd. Rizal at 31 years old and Azhari, 27, must be the youngest owners of a full-fledged advertising agency in the country.
"We're in the advertising industry, people dress this way," insists Rizal, who is in a grey dot-textured white shirt with the long sleeves rolled up nearly to the elbows, denim blue jeans, and rings on the thumb, and fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand.
His hair is fashionably close-cropped, a style in keeping with his "low maintenance" approach to personal upkeep, perhaps.
And the irony of their contrasting dress sense is that formal and proper Azhari is the creative director (and managing director), while relaxed and casual Rizal is the executive director, whose core responsibility in the partnership is to service clients.
They are entirely agreed on the approach to their business, though, and seem to get along famously, despite the fact that they only got to know each other four years ago.
It was Petronas which brought them together. This was in 1999 when they were working on separate jobs for the national oil corporation.
"I had clients and could find the jobs but no creative support. Azhari had the creative talent but had difficulty looking for clients. So, it's a merger of strengths," Rizal says, recalling their first meeting at The Dome at Suria KLCC.
Between them, they have handled, among other jobs, product launches, company family days, concerts, advertising campaigns, contests, roadshows, annual dinners, and dance and anniversary celebrations.
Azhari admits that he is not very good with company, especially in making small talk.
"When we first met, the first thing I noticed was that he didn't talk very much," Rizal laughs.
He, however, also saw the other side of Azhari - young, creative and extremely hardworking.
"This guy doesn't sleep... doesn't seem to need much sleep, anyway. When we started out, I used to keep him company when he did his work late into the night. I'd fall asleep while he continued on. When I woke up in the morning, all the things would be done and we'd be ready to make a presentation to the client."
Azhari acknowledges that Rizal is the talkative one. "Rizal excels in that area. He can talk about almost anything. I'm more at home with technical stuff. Ask me anything technical and I would probably bore you to death."
Rizal, on the other hand, confesses to being a complete failure when it comes to managing finances.
"I can bring all the money into the company but I cannot manage it. Azhari does that. You know what? He's the stingy one but it's good for the business. He has definitely taught me to be more disciplined about money," he says.
So disciplined is Azhari that he has refused offers from banks to bankroll the company. All expansions to date are funded internally.
It was at a millennium party in 2000 that they decided to team up. In April that year, they merged resources to form Caberawet.
From having a staff of three and doing only small jobs, Rizal and Azhari have expanded Caberawet into a company that provides creative solutions in all aspects of the business: brand consulting, design and concept, marketing communications and public relations.
The name Caberawet was suggested by one of their good friends, Mazlan Shariff. It was one of many proposed, which included Latin, English, Javanese and Malay words, or combinations of them.
"We didn't have any problems registering the name with the Registrar of Companies because it is unique. But the officials there laughed... it sounded weird to them," Rizal says.
Caberawet is Javanese for cili padi.
"The name was itself a challenge, initially. We were going into the business of commercialising brands... and the first brand we had to work on was our own."
They set up shop at Bandar Sri Damansara, Selangor, but in early 2001, both Rizal and Azhari decided to take a gamble and move to Bangunan SPPK in Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur.
It was logical as their anchor client then was developer SPPK.
"When we were at Bandar Sri Damansara, I had to come out four or five times a day to SPPK. Moving here helped a lot in terms of cost and time saved," says Rizal, who was servicing the account.
He used up Caberawet's entire savings ofRM7,000 to pay the first month's rent at Bangunan SPPK.
"The office was sprawling and there was only me, Azhari and another designer. Friends thought we were crazy to get such a big place.
"We moved to where our client is to enable us to service them better. And that gamble paid off," Rizal adds.
Two years on, every corner of that big office is now occupied. Caberawet has grown into a group comprising five other companies, each one a profit centre and specialising in different areas.
It now has 30 staff and an equal number of clients who include developers, trading companies, oil and gas companies, banks and tourism-related companies.
It is considering leasing another floor in the SPPK building as Azhari is looking at doubling the team in light of increased business.
Not bad for a three-year-old company thatstarted from scratch, and especially in an industry as tough as advertising.
"Initially, we didn't believe we could go up against the international agencies. But after a while, our work starts to speak for itself.
"Since then, we've won pitches against some much bigger agencies. In the process, clients - and we ourselves - have gained confidence in our work. Furthermore, our pricing is much more competitive," Azhari says.
Last year, the company raked in RM1.2 million worth of billings. The company has surpassed that so far this year.
"I have to hand it to Rizal. It's his work. If he says he'll get this much of business for the company for the year, he works at it. He's a go-getter," Azhari adds.
However, far too many Malaysian companies still prefer to go with international agencies, although the local ones can offer the same, if not better, service, he laments.
"We've been told that our pitches are brilliant but still get turned away with the prospective client opting for an international agency.
"Why? Because of their name, never mind that most of the creative guys in the international advertising agencies are locals!"
Like most agencies, Caberawet is busiest between March and June when clients engage them to undertake production of things like annual reports and greeting cards.
The team also produces design "collaterals" such as corporate folders, marketing brochures, bunting, leaflets, corporate ID and other below-the-line materials.
Much of whatever they earn is ploughed back into the company - and as reward to the employees. Last year, Caberawet staff had a pleasant surprise when their bosses decided to give them a bonus before Hari Raya.
"We heard them checking with each other on the extra money they had in their bank accounts. It makes our staff feel good and when they feel good, we feel good too," Rizal says.
The company rewarded the staff again this year, only a handful of whom have experience working in the advertising industry before joining Caberawet.
Azhari believes in taking in fresh graduates, and training and moulding them.
"When you train them yourself, you get the quality ofwork that meets your expectations and specifications. And we train them to do everything," he says.
Both Azhari and Rizal spent their formative years with a number of printing and advertising agencies.
Azhari, a Lim Kok Wing Institute of Creative Technology graphic design graduate, started out as a colour separator at a printing company. He had also worked at McDonald's part-time while pursuing his studies.
"Eventually, I got a job as art director at Equatorial Bangi. You know the A3-portfolio bag? I was carrying it around to meetings, actually sitting on it when riding on my kapcai," he says.
Rizal, Perlis-born but whose family have moved to Kuala Lumpur ("no more balik kampung each Raya"), had basic training in graphic design.
"I've gone through a lot, even retrenchment when I was 26 years old. It was the lowest point of my life. My car was re-possessed and I had to schedule my meetings in-between my dad's and my sister's so that I could use their cars. Alhamdulillah, things are better now."
Rizal drives a Waja (with a prominent dent on the right side) and true blue KL-ite Azhari a Wira, which is a refreshing indication that the young men have their feet firmly planted on the ground. No high life and flashy cars for them - yet.
Still, where do they network for contacts?
The dance floor!
Rizal, the Salsa King of Caberawet (he took salsa lessons and "the floor literally parts when he does the dance," Azhari reveals), however, claims that his clubbing days are over.
"You bump into lots of people at clubs. They can be potential clients. Sometimes it's useful when you pitch for jobs because you already know the people socially," he says.
The two friends and business associates also share a favourite lepak destination - Langkawi. They go there so often that the people on Pantai Cenang greet them like old friends.
"The first time we went there, we had only RM200 between us but we stayed for a week. We've been there so many times we've lost count," Azhari says.
"And we always make new friends each time," Rizal adds.
The likeable duo are apparently also acquiring a widening circle of clients too.
(END)

Adzmi's Whirl

"LISTEN," says Captain Mohd Adzmi Ariffin. "Listen carefully." To the untrained ear it was just the sound of a helicopter engine revving. "No, listen. A good pilot should be able to tell what is wrong with his helicopter just by listening to the engine," he adds.
Adzmi was given the tip by an instructor in Redhill, Surrey, southern England, where he earned his wings some 20 years ago.
And he honed that skill over the years, first flying for Bristow Helicopters to serve North Sea oil rigs and later for MHS Aviation Bhd.
Pahang-born Adzmi ("don't call me captain, it's not my first name") is a rare breed. Currently chief pilot for MHS Aviation's rotary wing operations in Sudan, he is one of only a handful of civilian-trained helicopter pilots in Malaysia. Most local helicopter pilots are military-trained, serving with the armed forces prior to becoming commercial
helicopter pilots.
Although MHS Aviation has 126 pilots, few can match Adzmi's experience.
For example, he has flown Eurocopter's Ecureuil 355 from London's Gatwick Airport, across the English Channel and via France, Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, on to Alexandria, Egypt, then south along the River Nile and finally into Sudan. Not once, but twice!
The second occasion, what should have been a five-day ferry flight, took an incident-riddled month to complete. It was early this year.
As he had to make stops every 3 1/2 hours to refuel, Adzmi had to chart his route carefully. An engine blow-out saw him grounded in Corfu (turning it into "an all-expenses paid holiday of sorts," he says). After the repairs made by Eurocopter, he flew across the Mediterranean into Egypt ("it was madness on our part... a pretty dangerous thing to fly a helicopter long distances over water").
Nearing his final destination in Sudan he ran out of fuel because he had deviated from his original route ("we had to land in the desert").
Unlike his commercial jet pilot friends who routinely fly scheduled routes, Adzmi, whose tasks change almost on a daily basis, feels his job is more like something out of the National Geographic or Discovery Travel and Adventure channels.
Located some 480 miles south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, Heglig has been Adzmi's base for three years now, ever since MHS Aviation started providing helicopter services to the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company.
He heads a four-man team.
Although the company's core activity is servicing the oil and gas industry, it also undertakes community services such as humanitarian evacuations and the sending of engineers into the remoter reaches of the country to repair water wells. It also ferries VIPs visiting the oil and gas fields in the southern parts of Sudan.
MHS Aviation also operates a fixed wing service in Sudan, with six pilots, based in Khartoum.
Despite having been a helicopter pilot for almost half his life, Adzmi, who is rostered to return to Malaysia every other month, still feels the adrenaline rush whenever he tucks his 175-cm frame into the pilot's seat.
Helicopters, according to Adzmi, are extremely reliable flying machines, their performance only restricted by human limitations.
"Helicopters can reach altitudes of up to 23,000 feet, but given that we are not in a pressurised cabin like the cockpit of a jetliner, we can only comfortably climb up to 10,000 feet. Any higher than that and we would have to put on oxygen masks.
"Lack of oxygen leads to disorientation and we don't want that to happen... we constantly need to make important decisions. When flying a helicopter, we are flying by the seat of our pants. Anything can happen and we need to be mentally alert."
Unlike some commercial jet pilots who can renew their licences using simulators, helicopter pilots have to do it for real, usually having to perform a series of tasks to see how they react, among other things, to engine failures and onboard fires. The licence is renewed annually, but for pilots aged 40 and above, it's every six months.
"The helicopter," says Adzmi, who has covered the length and breadth of the vast land on Horn of Africa without any difficulty, "is the fastest and safest mode of transport in Sudan. Furthermore, a helicopter can land almost anywhere in the rugged country".
"We once landed on the main road in Muglad and caused a traffic jam. There was an accident and we were asked to send in a team of health, safety and environment officers to investigate."
Finding his way to towns and villages in Sudan poses few problems too, even though the places he has had to fly to cannot be found on conventional maps.
"We find our way by the latitude and longitude coordinates given to us by the Community Service officer. We punch the coordinates into the GPS (global positioning system) and let the helicopter take us there. We often also bring along a guide to show the way. Maafi mushkila (no problem)," he says, in Arabic, the official language of Sudan.
Winter, continues Adzmi, is the most challenging time to fly in Sudan due to the cold, dry air.
"Everything is brown as far as the eye can see. The dry conditions result in clouds of brown dust engulfing the helicopter as it hovers just above the ground prior to landing.
"The pilot will not be able to see anything outside the cockpit. He can become disoriented, lose his situational awareness, and any over-controlling of the helicopter can lead to a hazardous situation. Violent manoeuvring too close to the ground can prove fatal."
In such circumstances, Adzmi says, the non-handling pilot would concentrate on the artificial horizon monitor and warn the handling pilot of any aggressive movements.
"The handling pilot will be on the lookout for stationary objects that can be affected when the main rotor is down."
There is also the danger of what is called a dynamic rollover, caused by a helicopter making contact with the ground with only one skid or wheel. The threat is greatest when trying to land on sloping or uneven ground.
And in emergency situations, the Thuraya satellite telephone is a lifesaver.
"We can call for help from anywhere. We may try to rectify the problem ourselves or just wait for help, which comes by road."
In case of a fire on board, the pilot would have to come down immediately, irrespective of whether it's on land or water.
"We do think about it quite a lot before flying. Each and every moment, we ask ourselves if we are going to make it through our tasks and return in one piece."
In his two decades as a helicopter pilot, Adzmi has had to make his fair share of emergency landings. He vividly recalls that when he was based in Miri, he had on separate occasions to make emergency landings at the airport there, and in Labuan and Kota Kinabalu.
"The airport authorities had the Airport Fire and Rescue Services on standby on the runway all ready to shoot foam when I landed," he says.
When stuck in the middle of nowhere, tech-savvy Adzmi is not without company. He has an iPod that holds thousands of MP3 songs whe he has downloaded.
His taste in music is eclectic, from dangdut by local songstresses Amelina and Sheeda, to internationally-renowned Indonesian artiste, Anggun. He also listens to Linkin Park and Eminem.
"Some are from my children's collections," he says, sheepishly. He has four children aged from six to 16, who live in Subang Jaya with their mother, Zakiah Ahmad, a legal counsel with an oil and gas company.
And Adzmi could have acquired three other wives in Sudan if he had wanted to.
"It was a hot day and we had just landed in one of the community camps. I wanted to get some shut-eye before flying out again. I placed a mat under the belly of the helicopter and lay down.
"I don't think I had slept very long, when I suddenly became aware that I was surrounded by people... a bevy of Sudanese women. Then I saw this man who said: `Sauja, arbaa (wives, four)' pointing to the women.
"He was offering me his daughters. Of course, I declined. How was I to explain to my wife?" he laughs. He couldn't also imagine paying 15 head of cattle for each of the man's daughters.
Another high-tech gadget which is always with him is his four megapixel Olympus digital camera (which he is planning to upgrade soon). He has used it to take countless pictures of Sudan and its people.
"When I first arrived, I noticed that none of the people in the community camps we visited wore shoes. When we returned a year later, they were wearing slippers. On subsequent visits, they could be seen wearing sandals. Of late, in places closer to town, people are sporting Reebok sneakers. We attribute it to improvement in living standards and income levels," he adds.
That explains the many pictures of feet in his collection of photographs.
Adzmi admits that he didn't have a very favourable impression of the country initially.
"I knew it was a poor, war-torn country. And when I got there, I found that it was worse than I had expected.
"I can safely say that there has been a lot of improvement since. There are now better roads, more cars and lots of construction going on in Khartoum. Outside the capital, development is slow, but there is progress as well. Many shops have opened... the economy is picking up."
In Sudan, the staple food is fool, a type of bean, and dura, cooked maize or millet. Both are eaten with various vegetables and bread. For something little more reminiscent of home, the MHS pilots would don aprons and cook up a storm in the kitchen. Malaysian students studying in the country often also join in.
Whenever he's back home in Malaysia, the first thing Adzmi looks for is nasi kandar.
"I go for the food first. I go to specific places for certain kinds of food," he says.
Starbucks' Latte is a must-have too, although he did think the coffee in the north-east African nation was just as good - until he found out how it was made.
"We landed in a desert-like area and there was this little hut selling coffee. We saw a woman pounding coffee which she then poured into a cup and added sugar and boiling water. It was without doubt the best coffee I had for a long time.
"Then it dawned upon us that we were in the middle of nowhere and we wondered where the woman had got the water from to make the coffee. We looked around and saw her scooping water out of a container – brackish water.
"Surprisingly, it didn't make us sick. It probably built up our resistance."
To Adzmi, who has flown seven types of helicopters, flying is no longer done just for a living. "When you enjoy your job, the money doesn't figure much. It is all about passion. If you don't have that, then it's just another job."
Adzmi could easily be a doctor, a flight engineer or a commercial jet pilot today.
But the ex-Putra (Royal Military College) boy is not only passionate about flying but also feels challenged by the helicopter.
He was initially slotted to do medicine at Universiti Malaya in 1978 but found out, when visiting a mortuary, that he was squeamish around dead bodies and blood.
He opted out after four years and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 to train as a flight engineer.
"It felt as if I had been given a second chance. I wanted so much to do engineering. I was always tearing apart things when I was a child. I was curious to find out how things operated."
His stint with the national carrier, however, was short-lived. Training was terminated in 1982 when the airline upgraded its fleet of aircraft and no longer required the services of flight engineers.
In the same year, Adzmi left for the Bristow Flying Training School where he spent two years earning his commercial pilot's licence. Towards the tail-end of his training stint, he flew for Bristow Helicopters.
He returned home in 1984, joined MHS Aviation as a helicopter pilot and was posted to Terengganu for six years before moving to Miri as Flight Safety Officer for the company's operations in Sabah and Sarawak.
In the 12 years he was there, Adzmi developed and implemented the country's - if not the world's - first Aviation Safety Management System for Shell Aviation.
In 2000, he was appointed managing/chief pilot for MHS Aviation's operations in Sudan.
He has logged 8,800 flying hours so far. In between, he has found time to study and sat for an aviation safety programme management course at the University of Southern California in 1990 and earned his Master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Ohio in 1994. For good measure, he also earned a Master's degree in Science from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2000.
Would he want to swap positions with his commercial pilot friends who, with the prettiest of cabin crew and even more attractive salaries, fly to the world's biggest cities?
Not at all. "I do have a choice... I could sit at home and view the world second-hand on the National Geographic channel, or I could be at the scene and experience it all first-hand.
"I think I'm getting a better deal."