Chy Sila has traveled to Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan and Israel, among other countries, trying to find new ideas for businesses and new ways to runs his business.
Mr Sila, managing director of CBM Corp, has over the last 8 years opened the restaurants T&C World, BB World, and Pizza World, after seeing similar businesses around the world. Yesterday, as the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Cambodia kicked off Global Entrepreneurship Week, he said that that businesspeople in Cambodia needed more exposure to new ideas as well.
“New ideas. Accept the change. Think about something that nobody thought about and go for it,” he said.
Mr Sila said there were plenty of business opportunities in Cambodia, as many large companies had not yet established themselves. But, he said, the business community needs to develop more opportunities for networking and more programs to expose young Cambodians to new ideas and ways of doing business.
In Channy, president of Acleda Bank, said that Cambodians could be very entrepreneurial when it comes to small and micro businesses.
“You can see how your parents did it and how your sister and brother did it,” he said.
But developing more skills and an understanding of finance, marketing and management is essential to growing medium and large business, and those skills need to be developed in Cambodia, he said.
Siet Sisopheak, managing director of Active Event Management and a member of the YEAC, which began in 2009 and has a membership of more than 50, said Cambodia needed more professional organizations and Cambodians needed more opportunities to meet with more foreign business people and learn from them.
“We can say there are not enough. We need more networking, he said.
YEAC has only one event scheduled this week for entrepreneurship week, but it has previously sent young entrepreneurs to places like China to gain the benefit of seeing China’s entrepreneurs up close.
“For they new generation they to share, they socialize. This is the new trend for the new young entrepreneur,” he said.
