UMK students earn six-figure income selling oden paste

KOTA BARU – They started doing business on the campus and now two Universiti Malaysia Kelantan students are beaming with pride as they make six-figure salaries from their homemade oden paste.

An entrepreneurship and business faculty graduate, Wan Azehan Helmi Wan Abdul Halim said the venture into the seasoning product business was inspired by a popular Japanese convenience store franchise chain, and was jointly developed with his partner Imer Jibril Mohd Nasir early last year.

The 24-year-old said that in the beginning, they only sold oden using recipes that they had prepared themselves, served with fish balls, crab meat, sausages, and others at a stall on campus.

“The idea to do business arose when the oden joint became a favourite food haunt for many students. However, the absence of students on campus due to the Covid-19 pandemic drove us to commercialise the oden paste online in April last year.

“Alhamdulillah, our online strategy using Facebook and Instagram paid off when we were able to earn about RM500 in sales in a month at that time, as we were only processing the oden paste manually without a machine at home,” he told reporters when met at his King Oden shop here in Jalan Salor Lama.

The duo used various marketing and sales techniques, including hiring about 10 UMK students as agents, which also helped the students get side income.

“At present, we have 500 agents nationwide, and there is demand for the paste from neighbouring countries such as Indonesia.

“To meet customer demand, we produce and market 30,000 to 40,000 packs of oden paste a month.

“We have three flavours – natural, spicy, and asam laksa, which sell for RM10 per pack and have a shelf life of up to eight months,” he said.

The hard work of both Wan Azehan, who is a final year student, and Imer Jibril, who graduated last year, has paid off, as the duo are proud owners of a processing plant in Bachok, which started operating in March.

“We hope our success will inspire more entrepreneurial students to venture into business,” he said, adding their sales target is to reach RM1 million by the end of this year. – Bernama, May 6, 2021