The pharmacist who bottled trust — and put it on Malaysia's shelves

Read time: ~6 minutes.

Adibah Mazlan was a board-certified pharmacist who kept noticing the same thing from behind the counter: Malaysians wanted skincare they could trust, and the shelf wasn't offering it. So she built the product herself — with her own savings, and no investors.

🎬 The Story

Adibah grew up in Selangor, Malaysia, in a middle-class family, and went into pharmacy — in her telling, a field where science meets impact. The entrepreneurial itch showed early: she sold things in school, and by 2015 was running a side business as a personal shopper, importing skincare brands that weren't available in Malaysia. All of this is from her interview with Vulcan Post (May 2025) — a sponsored brand feature, which we'll flag again where it matters.

The counter had limits. "I wanted to reach more people — and skincare became my way to merge pharmaceutical knowledge with everyday impact," she told Vulcan Post. What she saw in the local market was a specific gap: "Many were trendy but lacked substance. I saw a huge gap: Malaysians wanted affordable, effective skincare — but there was a trust deficit. I built The Raw to fill that gap."

She founded The Raw in 2019, per Vulcan Post. The starting capital, in her own words: "The brand was bootstrapped in the early days — I used savings from my pharmacy job, amounting to RM30,000, to get started." That is roughly US$7,000 at recent exchange rates — pharmacy savings, small batches, the basics first.

Then came the launch window nobody would have chosen: Malaysia's MCO lockdowns. "We launched during MCO (2020), and our content went viral organically. We spoke in a way people understood. TikTok and Instagram were key channels. We educated instead of selling, and word-of-mouth did the rest," she said. The pharmacist explaining ingredients turned out to be the marketing — a November 2023 press release (via Media OutReach) describes The Raw's team running live skincare consultations on Shopee Live, answering questions like whether an arbutin serum is safe during pregnancy. By the company's own count that year, over 30% of orders came in through livestream, more than 31,000 products were sold on Shopee in 2023 — six times the year before — and its bestselling Acne Spot Drying Solution was moving close to 2,000 bottles a month.

The product side stayed deliberately slow. Formulation to launch takes nine to twelve months, Adibah told Vulcan Post, with university labs and external R&D consultants validating ingredients — the pharmacist's reflexes applied to a category famous for skipping them. The early hero product was an Arbutin 2% Serum for brightening; the pitch was visible results without compromising skin safety.

Retail was the harder door. "Getting into retail wasn't easy. We had to prove our products were safe, compliant, and that we had a loyal customer base," she said. "Retailers took us seriously because our numbers backed us up." As of the May 2025 feature, The Raw sits in over 800 retail outlets, including Guardian, AEON Wellness and KPJ hospital pharmacies.

On money: Adibah told Vulcan Post the brand did about RM35 million in revenue in 2024 and was tracking RM50 million for 2025. Those figures are founder-reported in a sponsored feature, not independently audited — treat them as the founder's own accounting, direction confirmed by the retail footprint. What is not in dispute is the structure: no external investment taken ("yet," she notes), profits reinvested, and an ambition to expand into Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and the Middle East, with an IPO in her sights by 2028.

Her one-line theory of the business is the part worth keeping: "Marketing can sell once. But product quality builds longevity."

The takeaway

• Your day job can be the moat. Adibah didn't out-market the beauty industry; she brought pharmacy-grade rigor to a category with a trust deficit. The credential did work advertising can't.
• Teaching is a distribution channel. Live consultations and ingredient explainers — educating instead of selling — built the audience before the shelf space came.
• Proof opens retail doors. The path to 800 outlets ran through repeat-purchase data, not pitch decks. Retailers bought evidence.

🌏 Around the Region

• Singapore: Jane Hia built café chain Kith to 12 outlets over 17 years — then closed the last of them this year. She's now consulting for other struggling F&B operators, per Vulcan Post (July 2026). The rare second act built on a documented ending.
• Singapore: Vegetarian restaurant Annalakshmi has let diners decide their own bill for 25 years, sustained by volunteers and regulars who pay it forward — Vulcan Post (August 2026) looks at how the 1986-founded institution actually keeps the lights on.
• Singapore: Narresh Babu runs Rollney's Singapore arm — Hungarian chimney cakes at VivoCity — largely as a one-man operation. With profit margins down from about 28% in 2024 to 6% in 2026 by his own account, he's betting on vending machines instead of more stores, per Vulcan Post (August 2026).
• Malaysia: Zus Coffee — a single kiosk in 2019, now over 1,000 stores and past Starbucks as Malaysia's largest coffee chain by store count — is reportedly weighing a roughly US$245 million IPO as soon as mid-2027, per Bloomberg sources cited by VnExpress (August 2026).

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— The Editorial Team