public source · not yet founder-confirmed · 2025-05 · 🇲🇾 Malaysia (Selangor) · Beauty / skincare · solo founder
The pharmacist's skincare brand that reached 800 Malaysian retail outlets
A Selangor pharmacist put RM30,000 of savings into The Raw in 2019, went viral explaining ingredients during the 2020 lockdown, and reports RM35 million in 2024 revenue with no outside investors.
- Business
- Pharmacist-formulated skincare sold online and in retail (The Raw)
- Founder
- Adibah Mazlan (board-certified pharmacist)
- Started
- 2019
- Start-up capital
- RM30,000 from the founder's pharmacy-job savings (founder's words to Vulcan Post, May 2025)
- Revenue
- RM35 million in 2024, tracking RM50 million for 2025 — founder-reported in a sponsored Vulcan Post feature, not audited
- Team
- —
Numbers are ranges or the figure the source published; we never publish a founder's documents.
Source, pinpointed
Vulcan Post — The Raw's pharmacist founder on building a Malaysian skincare brand (sponsored feature, May 2025)
sponsored founder feature · 2025-05
First customers — the part nobody publishes
Channel: TikTok and Instagram (organic education), then Shopee Live
What didn't work: Retail was the hard door: buyers wanted proof of safety, compliance and a loyal customer base before listing the brand.
“Marketing can sell once. But product quality builds longevity.”
Launched during Malaysia's MCO lockdown in 2020; short videos of the pharmacist explaining ingredients went viral on TikTok and Instagram, and word of mouth did the rest. By 2023 the team ran live skincare consultations on Shopee Live; the company's own count that year: over 30% of orders via livestream, 31,000+ products sold on Shopee (six times the year before), the bestselling acne spot solution near 2,000 bottles a month. Retail followed once the numbers proved demand: 800+ outlets including Guardian, AEON Wellness and KPJ hospital pharmacies by May 2025.
Would it work in…
The same idea, other markets — our read from the database's country filters, not a forecast.
- Jakarta — likely — the founder names Indonesia as the next market; halal and BPOM registration are the gates
- Singapore — maybe — the price point that wins in Malaysia meets a crowded pharmacy shelf
Similar ideas in the database
- Online ordering for restaurants, sold to friends' restaurants first · Malaysia · US$3,000/month average (2022); US$4,300 in the best month reported
- Kitchen-made vegan skincare that became an Amazon bestseller · Singapore · not disclosed — the brand reports break-even within six months and a top-two Amazon lip-scrub ranking, no revenue figure
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Verified with the founder where marked · numbers as ranges · founders anonymised on request · corrections to [email protected] · ← the database