 Reaping success: Raja Zakaria harvesting fish at one of his concrete fish ponds in Kampung Bilok Banggu, Kelantan, recently. |
Barely 34 years old, he is a fine example of a successful Malay entrepreneur, hauling in a monthly harvest of 60 metric tonnes of Chinese carp, pangasius (patin), catfish and sultan (jelawat) fish.
Ten years ago, his friends and fellow villagers had scoffed at him for leaving a good job at a local bank to go into fish farming.
“They were not wrong for chiding me because becoming a wage earner was safer compared with the risk I had to take in business,” he said while harvesting the fish at his farms in his birthplace, Kampung Bilok Banggu, for a wholesaler from Pahang.
From a modest beginning of two ponds with a start-up capital of RM3,000, he now has 30 concrete ponds and 13 clay ponds, as well as fish in cages in an irrigation canal.
In the beginning, he had to search for a market, even going outside Kelantan, but now wholesalers from Terengganu and Pahang are making a beeline to his farm.
Source: thestar online