An interview with Tengku Erina Tengku Nasrudin. Chief Executive Officer Of Aeca Solutions Sdn Bhd

First of all, I would like to welcome you and thank you on behalf of OIC Today for making time for this interview. Before moving on to the company and your position in it, I would like to hear some of your personal thoughts. What sparked your interest in the field of technology, particularly in the Drone Industry? What goals are you aiming to personally achieve in this industry?

I would first like to share a little bit of my background before joining the industry. I grew up with my two sisters. My parents were easygoing and open-minded during my younger years save for the fact that they sent me and my sisters to an all-girls school and monitored us so that we would not be distracted from our studies. Since I was a child, I kind of play the role of a boy in the family whereas my sisters are more inclined towards artistic interests and are emotional beings. Till today, I would still seek advice from my sisters when it comes to fashion trends and how to cook. They would be reading novels and watching dramas, while I would be reading business books and watching documentaries. I find joy in reading instruction manuals, and fixing and assembling things too.

Conversely, I am less emotional and more drawn to facts and figures. I grew up watching movies like Tom Cruise’s Top Gun with my father and had thought about becoming a jet fighter. In a nutshell, I have been fascinated with the aviation industry from a very young age, a fascination brought about by my father has been in the aviation industry for as long as I could remember. This was a big factor that drove me to be passionate about the sky, the aerial view, and ultimately the drone industry. All these things combined, shaped my interest in the tech world, particularly in the drone industry.

If you were to ask the general public about drones just 20-25 years ago, they would usually respond with a bewildered look because drones were barely heard of at the time. People were more familiar with aircraft and remote control planes then, not drones. However, the beginning of my career saw me dealing with heavy equipment. I was not only selling, marketing, and growing the brand. At times, I had to operate a 30-ton excavator, a backhoe loader or a wheel loader. The largest equipment I ever operated was an articulated truck; the trickiest to operate was the motor-grader.

In the context of the technology industry, I represent the minority just by being a woman. I took this as a challenge. Fortunately, I have not had to fight to be heard. Whatever I have gotten, I have earned, just like everyone else. I’ve received no penalty for being a woman, nor have I gotten any discount. I was given the opportunity to settle down in the industry and flourish despite being a woman. The industry people are more amiable than I had expected and are often intrigued by the rare female presence amidst them. Because of this positive experience, I try to give similar opportunities to the younger people who join our company. When I was offered to lead and manage AECA Solutions which was founded by Mr. Khairul Ariffin Mohd Aris who is now serving as the Chief Operating Officer, I started making big plans but was intent on remaining modest. The former was not very difficult for me to do as I was part of the junior management team of a conglomerate for several years prior to joining AECA but the bigger and more exciting challenge for me was to scale down the dream.

As CEO of AECA Solutions, I inspire my team members to think big, and think beyond; tapping everyone’s potential to the fullest and creating synergies to rise together. Accordingly, my goals have to be dynamic too in this fast-moving and revolutionary world. Primarily, my goals are to groom my team to be analytical of our surroundings, to be agile and resilient to changes, to protect their relevance and remain competitive in order to thrive. Without these qualities, we would be susceptible to join the ranks of those who have sunk or are at risk of sinking when another storm hits.

I believe that you are well aware of the fact that only a small number of women are in the tech industry in Malaysia and the rest of the world, especially in high positions like yours. Why do you think women are far behind in the tech industry in Malaysia? Can you share your thoughts on the struggles and challenges women face in the corporate world, especially those who start a family life and resume their careers after a 5-10 years gap?

Firstly, we have lots of talent among the women population in Malaysia, especially in the universities doing technical or engineering courses. I, for one, graduated with a BSc in Information Technology from Tenaga Nasional University alongside many other great women. I went on to obtain a Certificate of Specialisation in Strategy from Harvard Business School Online. Women are actually doing well in academic institutions. But when it comes to career growth, it is a different story altogether. If they were to pursue their career in the tech industry for example, they would do just fine in the first couple of years. And then they would come to a juncture in life, where they would need to make a tough decision about whether to start a family or go after their career full-time. In Malaysian families or even Asian families in general, the parent that typically assumes the role of primary caregiver is the mother. When a family is faced with a choice over which parent should pull back on their careers to pay closer attention to the family’s needs, the mother is usually the one expected to put her career on the back burner. The good thing is that this culture has started to shift gradually, perhaps due to the growing number of ladies becoming key breadwinners for their families. Women are no longer automatically expected to halt their career progress to allow the men to make headway at work. Men are increasingly stepping up and becoming more involved with their families and children. In the long run, society also benefits from a more diverse and harmonious workforce when there are more women in the workplace offering their individual perspectives.

At the end of the day, the three things that are vital to help encourage women’s presence in any industry are Opportunity, Creativity and Compromise; the opportunity to show up at work without the guilt of ‘neglecting’ the family, the creativity to overcome responsibility clashes as well as a compromise between partners to meet each other halfway.

With regards to hijab and Muslim women, you know (since you often travel abroad) that it may come as a surprise to some to see a Muslim woman with hijab leading a tech company. Why is it so? And how can we break the stereotypes that exist not only in non-Muslim societies but also in Muslim communities?

For me personally, I have first-hand experience on how non-Muslim societies react when they see a Muslim woman in hijab like me leading a tech company. The general perception around the world especially in the West is that women are kind of oppressed and they are only confined within the four walls of their households. The stereotypes are too many to count. When I am out there, abroad, I make it my duty to make them understand that their perceptions are not entirely true. Yes, there are some extraordinarily complex situations for Muslim women in some societies. But not all Muslim women are the same and they are not brought up in similar environments. Therefore, judging and labelling them the same is not an effective way to understand them. I believe all Muslim women who go to the West into non-Muslim societies should contribute towards debunking the stereotypes. It is just a matter of talking, explaining and being friendly to them. That is to me, the way forward.

It has been more than 5 years since the firm was founded, which was in 2016. What was the founding vision of the company? What goals does AECA Solutions want to achieve besides generating revenues and profits? How can AECA benefit other businesses, and the society at large? 

Allow me to impart a few facts. Mr Khairul Ariffin, now COO of AECA Solutions, founded 2 other drone companies since 2013, prior to establishing AECA at the end of 2016 where he brought in hisexpertise as well as mine. With both our professional experience, we started prepping this company for success in the Malaysian drone industry. Being a drone company in 2016 when the drone industry was growing exponentially in Malaysia and also globally, we had to face a great number of challenges and competition at the same time. Drones at that time were mainly focused on aerial photography and videography. But we saw things differently. Through AECA, we dedicated our focus on the corporate world, the agriculture industry and many other areas where we thought drone technology could be very useful. Drones have many verticals and areas of application. The more receptive and ready the industry, the greater its potential benefits from implementing the use of drones. LiDAR for drones for example, have been around even before 2016. But back then, they were bigger, bulkier, heavier and a lot more expensive. Because of this, the risk of deploying them was higher then. A risk not many could afford or were willing to take at that time.

Our aim is not limited to generating revenue. We have bigger goals that involve boosting the entire economy by helping other industries reduce their costs and save resources while resolving problems faster. In the agriculture sector for instance, with the help of our multispectral camera, we are able to ascertain how much fertiliser or pesticide a particular plot of land would need, if any. This allows us to customise a fertiliser and pesticide program for areas that require closer attention and monitoring. Conducting this analysis on a larger farm or plantation would cost more money, time and manpower if it was done using satellite images. This method is expensive as the images aren’t real time, so it would take longer to complete. We on the other hand are able to carry out aerial data acquisition, sample collection and ground truthing at a much faster rate using our advanced drone technology.

Since your company is in the tech sector utilising innovative technologies like drones, it is directly linked to the initiative to advance the nation’s involvement in technology as well as the economy as a whole. What has AECA Solutions achieved as a company in terms of national development related to the tech industry and/or drone industry?

Frankly speaking, there are countless drone companies here in Malaysia. However, the majority of them are serving the photography and entertainment industry. AECA Solutions caters to a more sophisticated market segment where a higher skill set is required to fly top-of-the-line drones, operate their systems and process the acquired data in order to generate relevant outputs. Naturally, this market segment would also involve higher costs.

AECA Solutions has made substantial investments to enable ourselves to offer the best solutions possible to our clients. We support our clients to make informed decisions, manage risks and save resources by providing them valuable information and advice to match their specific needs and desired applications. Our team of engineers are on hand to first identify and diagnose their problems, determine their objectives, as well as analyse the data together with our clients. What sets us apart from other drone service providers are our priorities; we allocate the bulk of our investments to own and have access to the best-in-class drones, powerful processing software and subject matter experts.

I would say that the demand for the market we are serving is indeed becoming increasingly recognized, and I believe the interest to be in this space is growing in tandem. However, I also know that it is not as easy as picking a drone to fly and flying it. Without the necessary know-how, it would be easy to eat into funds faster than the opportunity to generate them.

AECA intends to lead the drone technology industry by bringing in the most versatile drones with high-end payloads for the purpose of obtaining superior outputs that meet professional standards. We regularly conduct webinar sessions, actively engage with users via our social media platforms as well as participate in conferences, expos and demos to share and exchange news and views about the latest technology and innovations surrounding the drone industry.

How we’ve helped the industry is by showing that with tenacity and determination to do the right things the right way, we will get there. There are no shortcuts that are worth taking if we are going to stay in the game for a long time to come. We have demonstrated that in order to grow, we have to have integrity and be able to work together instead of against one another. We are proof that it pays to focus on the right stuff.

Having said that, we aim to push the envelope further in getting more people on board with drone technology. If nobody pushes the limit and everybody remains content in their comfort zone, the industry we are talking about would never grow. We strive to be the catalyst of change, encouraging more people and industries to adopt newer tech that may need adjusting to in terms of hardware, software and upskilling but are totally worth it in the end.

As we have observed, AECA Solutions offers customized drone-based solutions for diverse applications. Can you share more about the company’s current activities, main products in the market and also why drone-based tech is important for different applications?

AECA Solutions has been serving the Precision Agriculture, Construction, Aerial Survey & Mapping, Environmental Monitoring, Natural Disaster Management, and Security & Surveillance markets. Realizing the importance of competency and skills in drone technology, especially for the applications we serve, we have now included training as part of our services. Our training includes teaching participants how to maintain and operate drones for specific applications complete with basic troubleshooting skills. The syllabus we use is provided by our European manufacturers and has been integrated with Sijil Kemahiran Malaysia, in developing the local Drone National Occupational Skills Standard (NOSS), for which we are a panel of. Our comprehensive training modules aspire to instil into the hearts of the pilots a sense of responsibility in prolonging the life of the drone they operate, in capturing the best quality data possible as well as in overcoming any challenges they may face during flight.

Our company aims to regularise drone usage with different types of payloads for different applications. The remarkable capabilities of recent technology within the drones sphere is under recognized, hence underutilized. The drones, survey-grade sensors and cameras that are available today have yet to be discovered by the masses and we make it our job to increase their awareness and educate them. Aerial imaging is no longer just about taking pictures from above. It is about seeing and capturing what can’t be seen from the ground. It’s about enabling farmers to identify which crops need attention and about allowing state agencies to establish what land development activities need intervention in order to protect the environment or prevent a natural disaster, to name a few. Our drone technology and sensors are economical, versatile, highly accurate and resource-efficient. Our LiDARs, multispectral cameras and RGB sensors are all able to provide clients with a massive, high resolution and highly accurate data bank. The Oblique camera is our latest payload. It is equipped with 5 lenses and is able to produce 130-megapixel resolution which is simply phenomenal! This is also where our expertise will prove to be valuable, the ability to pick out the right data to fit your objective.

The majority of traditional aerial survey mapping businesses have closed down due to very high operational costs compared to a drone service provider and the longer time it takes to deliver final output. As mentioned on Yahoo Finance, the drone industry and the types of technology and services AECA offers can massively benefit the Precision Agriculture industry. Since agricultural land owners typically spend a big chunk of their budget on pesticides & fertilizers, companies with sizable plantations could save millions of ringgit by having customized pesticideand fertilizer programs that only target stress areas. A purposeful program can be designed through conducting plant health analysis using multispectral cameras and ground truthing to validate our aerial data.

The drone technology we use is not only good for mapping whole plantation areas and counting stands per hectare. We can analyse tree health, detect polluted water with our multispectral blue camera, as well as generate drainage networks, slope maps and Digital Terrain Models with our point cloud LiDAR system. Environmental Monitoring is a big part of AECA’s focus.

Natural Disaster Management is another area we are honoured to be in. We were able to respond and contribute towards the rescue and recovery efforts for several recent natural disasters by deploying our drone systems to actual disaster sites. We have also presented our use cases with regard to natural disasters during international conferences in Singapore and France about 3 months ago. As you can see, we have invested a considerable amount of money into our drone systems.

One of the most interesting things we have learned about AECA Solutions is that it is one of Malaysia’s leading drone companies that provide up-to-date solutions for various applications. How has the company achieved this position to the extent you have even been cited by Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg as well as Business Insider? How do you see the company compared to its competitors?

First of all, we have to be true to ourselves and set our direction. We want to be a big fish in a big pond hence international standards are our benchmark. Like any other startups, the first few years had been quite a struggle for AECA especially when it is cashflow funded. However, at the same time AECA Solutions has managed to inculcate a resilient workforce and has since been growing organically.

We had to ensure that the drones we use are the most durable, reliable and most importantly give the fastest return on investment (ROI). The sensors are recognized by professionals such as licensed surveyors and researchers. Our competent team of Surveying Engineers and Drone Engineers hold several safety passports, are certified and have been trained directly by manufacturers. Every drone vertical that we are certified in, we have a trained subject-matter-expert to lead, where we are able to offer consultation to our clients from A-to-Z seamlessly. These are what gives us a competitive edge.

AECA Solutions believe that talk is cheap and credibility is priceless. We take pride in the work that we do, so much so that we had almost overlooked allocating a budget for any form of marketing, advertising and publicity as our focus was not on ourselves, but on the quality of the results we produce.

With regards to the competitors, I believe healthy competitions are vital for the industry to thrive. So, I have great respect for all my competitors as they are helpful for AECA’s growth as well. As Sun Tzu said in the Art of War “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”. The cake for the drone industry is just going to keep getting larger each year and everyone shall prosper further from friendly collaborations.

As you know, Malaysia (and the world) is still gradually recovering from the pandemic. How has your company succeeded in facing the pandemic? And what steps are you taking as CEO to put forth the success of the company post-pandemic?

Most of our processes had already been made available online or using cloud software even before the pandemic. It is not because we knew Covid-19 was coming but it was due to the nature of our business where the operational team has to go to sites and work remotely, like literally, in remote areas. We have had to ensure that the right tools are used and that everyone and everything are readily accessible wherever they are to maximise productivity. Although the period of the movement control order was challenging as most of us were used to moving around a lot and travelling prior to the restriction, we managed to survive the Covid-19 pandemic by supporting each other virtually. As the leader, I reached out to employees and engaged with each of them once a week and with the entire team on a weekly basis via Zoom. Each team member was assigned tasks which included participating in upskilling programs online or webinars to enhance their knowledge and skills. Not long after the first lockdown, we were awarded a few sizeable projects which required us to recruit more team members and invest in bigger and better assets. Now that we’re transitioning into the endemic phase, we continue to work efficiently with our resources accessible remotely at any given time.

AECA Solutions has established itself as a leading Malaysian drone company by offering solutions using advanced drone technology. How do you personally evaluate the company’s achievement with respect to its founding goals? Is the company aware of pressing global issues related to the environment, natural disaster and food security? How can your company contribute in resolving such global issues?

Yes, these are our goals too. As a company, we have a responsibility towards the society we live in and the planet we live on. We have invested heavily in aerial LiDAR technology. This technology facilitates us in producing more accurate drainage network maps with flood simulation and slope maps for landslides and other natural disasters. We have been hired by agencies to evaluate the risk of natural disaster occuring at their sites. Our service of providing them vital information has become so crucial in determining their next course of action. Our technology has helped these agencies make informed decisions based on data and facts. Therefore, our company is reshaping the way the world thinks about natural disasters. It is quite rewarding for the whole team to work towards such a noble pursuit.

As one of the successful companies in the drone industry, it is important that your products are recognized and endorsed by local and international quality assurance bodies. What kind of certification or endorsement do you have? And can Aerial LiDAR technology can be used for Natural Disaster Management AECA offers the best solution and equipment to cover large and small areas without compromising the quality of data captured the clients rely on your products and services in terms of quality? If yes, why do you believe so?

The drones that we are using are highly efficient drones, one of which is the Trinity F90+ by Quantum-Systems GmbH, imported from Germany. It is Germanengineered, CE compliant and Eco certified. Among other certifications worldwide, Trinity F90+ complies to and is certified by Malaysia’s SIRIM and MCMC. So, we are highly compliant with quality assurance standards both locally and internationally. Our clients and prospects can rely on us for high quality services and products with the right certification from relevant authorities. Among other things, we prioritise the safety and security of our drones, employees and the properties of the client.

Finally, what is your future plan for the company? What do you want to accomplish in the near future, let’s say within the next 5 years?

For a tech company, 5-10 years is a long time. We started with aerial photography and videography in 2016 followed by Precision Agriculture and Aerial Survey & Mapping not long after. Now we are working in so many diverse fields like Environmental Monitoring, Natural Disaster Management and Mobile Mapping. We have recently brought in our tactical drone for the Security and Surveillance sector. More and more world-class project consulting companies, the Government and its agencies are engaging us to implement their Digital Twin initiatives. It is going to be exciting and our versatile team is ready to explore future possibilities. We are bringing the future closer.