Not another wellness app. This one started with a loved one's struggle.

For Barry Ooi — economist turned fashion founder, data analytics entrepreneur, and corporate venture builder — the industries changed constantly. As he puts it, he went wherever the wind blew. But the one constant running underneath it all was watching a loved one navigate depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder: the exhausting cycle of finding the wrong therapist, starting over, reopening old wounds, never feeling like they'd found the right kind of help.

In this episode, we dig into how that lived experience became Chengal, a one-stop clinical mental health centre that deliberately broke every convention in Malaysian healthcare — from irreverent social media that makes psychiatrists look human, to being the only clinic in the country publicly declaring itself queer-affirming, to building a multidisciplinary team where a psychiatrist, an art therapist, and a life coach sit in the same room with no hierarchy.

We cover the regulatory landmines of building in healthcare versus tech, the founder who takes anxiety medication and openly says so, and what it actually means to build a business where kindness isn't a culture initiative — it's the entire product.

For founders, the second half is a masterclass in finding your unfair advantage when you have none. Jump straight to the start if you want the personal origin story — how a decade of watching someone you love struggle eventually becomes the clearest brief you've ever been given.

The anti-hustle, anti-tech, deeply personal mental health story.

𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗹'𝘀 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:
→ Profitable by Month 4 of operations
→ Only psychiatric centre in Malaysia publicly queer-affirming
→ Clients across Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Middle East
→ ~30% student clientele — reaching the most underserved demographic
→ Next step: inpatient care facility to fill the gap between institutions and full independence

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🔗 Connect with Our Guest
===========================
Barry Ooi (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryooi
Chengal Centre: https://chengalcentre.com
WhatsApp / Appointments: +603-5633 8386

===========================
🎙️ Want to be featured on Building Real?
===========================
I'm always looking to speak with founders doing real work in the real world.
📩 Reach out: http://calendly.com/arjun-arcshift/

===========================
🤝 Let's Connect
===========================
I'm always keen to meet interesting builders, operators, and investors.
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunthomas

===========================
🚀 Working on a venture? Let's talk.
===========================
If you're an early-stage founder who needs strategic support — positioning, go-to-market, fundraising, or just a sharp second opinion — I can help.
Book a call: http://calendly.com/arjun-arcshift/

#mentalhealth #mentalhealthstartup #malaysiafounder #founderjourney #healthcareinnovation #mentalhealthawareness #startuplife #venturebuildng #buildingrealpodcast #chengal #queeraffirming #foundermentalhealth

Not a restaurant, not a food-tech startup. Just a balcony, four aunties, and the world's highest-rated cooking experience.

What do you do when a startup folds, immigration botches your paperwork, and you find yourself locked out of Singapore for five months — no job, no income, and a lease you can't escape?

For Dhruv Shanker — former Alibaba exec (Lazada, Daraaz), Groupon marketer, and obsessive home cook — the answer was to open a cooking class on his balcony. A deliberately, defiantly "boring" cooking class that Airbnb literally tried to reject.

In this episode, we unpack how Dhruv runs two wildly different businesses — CashCounter (e-commerce enablement for brands entering Southeast Asia) and Boring Indian Food (private dining, cooking classes, catering). We get into the AI playbook he uses on Lazada and Shopee, the K-pop hot sauce story that explains Asian e-commerce, and the guests who've walked through his door: a drug lord's private chef, a blind guest who cooked an entire meal unaided, and a nine-months pregnant woman who just needed Gongura chicken.

The first half is for anyone building a business on marketplaces — Dhruv draws on years inside Alibaba, Lazada, Groupon and Google to break down what separates great e-commerce sellers from everyone else. If food, people, and what happens when real passion meets a real crisis is more your thing, jump straight to [40:37] — that's where the story gets personal.

The anti-restaurant story that hit 10,000 guests without a single table.

𝗗𝗵𝗿𝘂𝘃'𝘀 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:
→ Airbnb's highest-rated culinary experience in the world — perfect 5.0 stars, 100+ reviews
→ 10,000+ guests hosted across 8 years of private dining in Singapore
→ Featured in SG60 — one of 60 remarkable people in Singapore
→ 2 years of forward bookings filled in a single night after Airbnb's global campaign

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🔗 Connect with Our Guest
===========================
Dhruv Shanker (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/madonionslicer/
Mad Onion Slicer: https://www.madonionslicer.com
Instagram / All platforms: @madonionslicer

===========================
🎙️ Want to be featured on Building Real?
===========================
Building something interesting in deep tech, climate, or hard tech?
I'm always looking to speak with founders doing real work in the real world.
📩 Reach out: http://calendly.com/arjun-arcshift/

===========================
🤝 Let's Connect
===========================
I'm always keen to meet interesting builders, operators, and investors.
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunthomas

===========================
🚀 Working on a venture? Let's talk.
===========================
If you're an early-stage founder who needs strategic support — positioning, go-to-market, fundraising, or just a sharp second opinion — I can help.
Book a call: http://calendly.com/arjun-arcshift/

#ecommerce #privatedining #singaporefounder #founderjourney #airbnb #boringindianfood #ecommerceasia #marketplaces #startuplife #buildingrealpodcast

Not another AI startup — this is deep tech that runs on bacteria.

What do you do when your apartment's "sewage treatment plant" overflows and you discover it's just a fake tank dumping raw waste into a lake?

For Tharun Kumar — former IT architect behind India's Aadhaar system — that crisis became EcoSTP: a sewage treatment system inspired by a cow's stomach that runs on zero power, zero chemicals, and almost no human intervention.

In this episode, we dig into how Tharun left corporate IT to spend a decade "in deep shit," why 100-year-old STP technology never evolved, and how EcoSTP uses anaerobic bacteria and biomimicry to let some clients reuse the same water over 1,000 times. We cover the jargon wall that protected a broken industry for a century, the regulator who first banned his tech and then became his case study, and what it took to scale a licensing model across 24 Indian states plus Bangladesh and the Maldives — all managed from Bangalore.

If the business model and scale story is what you're here for, the whole episode delivers. If you want to jump straight to the science — how cow stomachs inspired a zero-energy treatment system — head to [10:17]. That's where it gets fascinating.

A cleantech and circular economy story that started with a real crisis. Not a pitch deck.

𝗘𝗰𝗼𝗦𝗧𝗣'𝘀 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁:
→ 8 billion litres of water reclaimed
→ 12,000 tons of coal avoided (no energy-hungry aeration)
→ Startup India's "Most Circular Innovator" — pitched to the Prime Minister of India
→ Phenol-eating bacteria research underway at IIT Jammu — a shot at drinking-quality water from sewage

===========================
🔗 Connect with Our Guest
===========================
Tharun Kumar (LinkedIn): https://linkedin.com/in/tharun/
EcoSTP: https://ecostp.com/

===========================
🎙️ Want to be featured on Building Real?
===========================
Building something interesting in deep tech, climate, or hard tech?
I'm always looking to speak with founders doing real work in the real world.
📩 Reach out: http://calendly.com/arjun-arcshift/

===========================
🤝 Let's Connect
===========================
I'm always keen to meet interesting builders, operators, and investors.
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunthomas

===========================
🚀 Working on a venture? Let's talk.
===========================
If you're an early-stage founder who needs strategic support — positioning, go-to-market, fundraising, or just a sharp second opinion — I can help.
Book a call: http://calendly.com/arjun-arcshift/

#cleantech #deeptech #wastewater #circulareconomy #startupindia #ecostp #biomimicry #founderjourney #buildingrealpodcast