Edwin Tay and the business of choosing a future

Eight rented laptops, a laser printer and a stack of business cards: Edwin Tay’s early attempt to attract students to EasyUni had the equipment list of a modest office. At education fairs in Malaysia, visitors could sit down, enter their details and leave with personalised namecards. EasyUni’s logo and web address went on the back. Students heading to college could hand the cards to old friends, new classmates and relatives. A university search business had found a small, useful object that could travel.

Tay recalled students returning for more cards, sometimes bringing friends. There is something pleasantly practical about the episode. Before the talk of international expansion, there was a booth where someone had to make the printer work. Before a student could become a user, EasyUni had to give that student a reason to stop.

A niece, a nephew and too many choices

The problem came into focus in 2008. Tay’s niece was trying to choose a university; his co-founder’s nephew faced a similar difficulty. Information existed, but comparing institutions and courses meant assembling it from different places. Tay saw a task that families were expected to perform without a convenient way to do it.

Anyone who has tried to compare universities will recognise the predicament. One prospectus foregrounds facilities, another its connections to employers. Fees live elsewhere. A scholarship may change the arithmetic completely. Even when every individual claim is accurate, the collection can be remarkably hard to use. A pile of answers does not necessarily answer the question.

In a 2014 interview, Tay described his niece coming away confused from education fairs. His idea was to move the research online, where families could browse at their own pace, without someone standing behind them urging them towards a particular course. The portal launched in December 2010. A decision with years of consequences could at least begin with a quieter conversation.

The engineer who learned to sell

Tay graduated from Universiti Sains Malaysia with a degree in materials engineering. He worked as an R&D engineer before starting NetInfinium in 2000, a digital agency and email technology business. His education had given him one discipline; running a company required him to acquire several more.

He also credits an early spell as an Amway distributor with awakening his interest in entrepreneurship. He did not describe it as a commercial triumph. Its value, in his telling, was learning to pursue what he wanted. An unsuccessful venture can still supply a useful apprenticeship, provided its graduate is willing to distinguish the lesson from the result.

NetInfinium brought more visible recognition, including Red Herring Asia Top 100 and Deloitte Asia Pacific’s Fast 500 recognition in 2005 and 2006. In 2011, Tay sold the business to the listed company N2N Connect. EasyUni became his second startup, carrying over his experience in digital marketing into a field where the purchase was an education.

Who gets the bill?

EasyUni had two constituencies to bring together. Students needed help finding an appropriate course. Universities needed to reach prospective students, often across borders. The service could create value for both, but the founders still had to decide which side would pay.

The early model combined university listing charges with placement commissions. Students and parents used the service free. By 2014, Tay was describing a wider offering for institutions: premium visibility, verified enquiries, student placement, events and social media work aimed at Asian audiences. He was quite explicit about the audience EasyUni could deliver.

“We tell our clients that if they want American or European students don’t come to us”

Edwin Tay, 2014

A sentence like that saves everyone a meeting. It also shows Tay’s willingness to draw a boundary around the business. Universities were buying access to a region the company understood, rather than a promise to recruit everybody everywhere. International ambition can begin with a fairly precise answer to the question of whom you can actually help.

For the student, the stakes remain personal. A university needs enrolments; a young applicant needs a course that fits interests, finances and plans. Those incentives can overlap without becoming identical. The enduring challenge for a service such as EasyUni is to make the connection useful to the person making the decision as well as to the institution funding the introduction.

An internet business reaches for paper

In 2013, EasyUni prepared to publish The Ultimate University Guidebook. Tay said requests for a printed version had prompted the experiment. An online aggregator was moving onto paper while universities were shifting more of their marketing budgets towards the internet. The direction of travel would have annoyed a tidy business-school diagram.

It made a certain human sense. A printed guide can sit on a table while a family talks. It can reach a student through school. The useful medium depends on the moment, and people rarely organise their decisions to suit a founder’s preferred distribution channel.

The publishing work continued. Apple Books lists an issue of the EASYUNI Ultimate University Guide 2016, with Tay named as publisher and seller. Its description discusses student initiative and internship opportunities. The search portal had acquired an editorial voice as well as a database.

Money saved, eyebrows raised

Teak Capital’s investment gave EasyUni another kind of education. Tay credited managing director Chok Kwee Bee with improving its sales process and introducing milestones. He had brought energy to the operation; an investor helped turn that energy into a system whose progress could be checked.

Then came an awkward discovery. At Echelon in Singapore in 2014, some regional investors were surprised that he still had money from the earlier funding round. Tay had treated financial restraint as an advantage. They wanted the capital used more aggressively to gain market share. A virtue in one room could provoke questions in the next.

EasyUni had become cash-flow positive in March 2014, according to Tay’s account that July. Yet he was seeking further funding for expansion. The tension is familiar to founders: conserving money keeps a company alive, while spending it may help the company reach customers before somebody else does. Knowing how to balance the two is considerably harder than admiring either in isolation.

Local voices for an international ambition

Tay’s later description of localisation went beyond translating English copy. In 2019, he explained that EasyUni used local writers to create original content suited to readers in different markets. Language was part of the task; understanding how an audience preferred to read was another.

That distinction matters in university recruitment. A course page must help someone understand an unfamiliar institution, often in an unfamiliar country. A local writer can begin with the questions readers actually ask, rather than the questions an overseas marketing department assumes they ask. The practical work of going international can therefore involve becoming more attentive to individual places.

Inside the business, Tay encouraged employees to communicate ideas directly. EasyUni’s recruitment profile describes a flat hierarchy, with access to senior management. Such an arrangement asks something of both sides: junior staff must be willing to speak, and the people at the top must make speaking worth the trouble.

“We like everyone to communicate directly if they have good ideas.”

Edwin Tay, EasyUni recruitment profile

Helping after the application

Choosing a university was only part of the financial problem for students. In 2016, EasyUni launched a paid internship programme connecting students with work experience and income. Participating businesses included Shopee Malaysia and Fork D World Bistro, with opportunities across areas such as advertising, retail and technology.

The work could include writing, design, translation and data entry. One EasyUni intern, an international business student, described choosing a smaller company for more personal, practical training. The initiative extended the company’s involvement beyond the application form into the ordinary business of getting through university and preparing for employment.

A student testimonial gives a more individual view of Tay’s involvement. Divyang Hong, who chose a foundation in science at Nilai University, singled him out for helping secure an option that met his needs. Hong specifically mentioned scholarship and accommodation considerations. The details are small beside expansion plans, but large beside a student’s budget.

A founder returns the favour

In 2015, Tay was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur at the organisation’s international selection panel in Singapore. EasyUni was the fourth Malaysian company selected. For someone building a business across markets, the recognition brought him into a network centred on entrepreneurship.

He later described mentoring other founders as a way to repay help he had received. By June 2021, he was among the CyRise team thanked by participants in a cybersecurity startup bootcamp in Melbourne. The industry had changed; the work of helping a founder explain an idea and find a market remained familiar.

Founder Institute’s February 2024 announcement for its Malaysia programme lists Tay among its mentors, identifying him as an EasyUni director. The thread runs from seeking advice to providing it. Experience becomes useful to someone else when its owner can explain the mistakes as clearly as the achievements.

One of Tay’s own concise verdicts offers a fitting closing thought:

“Our biggest competitor is ourselves.”

Edwin Tay, 2019

It is an unusually manageable rival. It is also a demanding one. There is always a sales process to improve, a student’s question to understand, a page that could explain a course more clearly. Tay’s story begins with relatives struggling to choose their next step. Its most persuasive episodes keep returning to that scale: a choice, a person, and something useful placed within reach.