Luck had done a good turn for Lennise Ng’s family. Her grandfather opened a small shop to work his way out of poverty. He worked hard, but hard work alone was not the whole explanation. The right supplier and the right product arrived in his life. His granddaughter would come to describe that meeting as “pure luck.” Years later, she began building a business around a question: could another shopkeeper get a useful introduction without having to wait for fortune?
That question has a distinctly practical setting. A neighbourhood store has shelves to fill, customers who expect familiar goods, and money that cannot be in two places at once. Finding a supplier is one task. Choosing stock that will actually sell is another. Paying for it before the sales come in adds a third. Ng’s work with Dropee, later renamed Borong, put those problems in the same conversation.
She came to wholesale by a route that included music, a failed talent agency, Melbourne, Yelp and venture building. The family trade supplied the problem. The detours supplied ways of looking at it. Her story makes a useful argument for the career that refuses to travel in a straight line.
A family business, with a different instrument
Ng grew up in an entrepreneurial family and helped with its business when she was young. The family manufactured and distributed rubber products; she was its third generation. In her early account of that upbringing, business and food were the family’s two inexhaustible subjects. Negotiating and selling were familiar activities before she ever had a technology company to explain.
Music offered another possible future. While studying it, she began helping musician friends with the commercial work they found difficult. There was a gap between being able to perform and being able to sell a performance. At 19, she and a friend opened a talent management company. The company did not last. She carried away an interest in business that survived its first business model.
There is a family resemblance between that early venture and the later one. Musicians needed someone to help them reach buyers. Small retailers needed access to sellers. In both cases, the useful work happened between people who already had something to offer. Ng’s own contribution was to make the connection easier to arrange.
Before wholesale, there were musicians. Her first company began at 19, helping performers with the business around their work.
The job interview that needed three months
She changed course academically, studying management and accounting in Melbourne. The University of Melbourne’s Malaysian alumni association lists her as a 2014 Bachelor of Commerce graduate. During university she encountered the startup world through work at an accelerator and venture capital business. Investment banking or consulting had once looked like possible destinations. Technology businesses gave her another option.
Then Yelp contacted her about a role launching in Malaysia. She had not applied and initially wondered whether the message was a scam. The conversation became more awkward when the company realised she was still an undergraduate: did she know somebody suitable? She asked for three months to prove herself, even offering to work without pay. Three months later, she had the job.
Her route subsequently took her through Infinite Ventures, a venture-building accelerator, before she joined the family business. That return gave her a close view of wholesale’s manual processes. Even sizeable businesses still relied on pen and paper. She had spent time around companies designed to change how people behaved; now she was looking at a trade that badly needed better tools.
There was also a less formal identity from those student years. Friends called her “Mia,” short for missing in action, because living in Klang while studying in Damansara made social appearances difficult. A nickname born of a long commute proved rather more durable than the timetable that caused it.
What happens before a shelf is full
In 2017, Ng co-founded Dropee. Fellow founders included Aizat Rahim and Haslinda Rasip. The proposition brought wholesalers and retailers together online, with software to help manage the transactions. By February 2018, Ng and Rahim were discussing the marketplace’s full release, its web interface and plans for partnerships. The everyday business of restocking had become their product.
The difficulty extended beyond a missing telephone number. A shop with limited shelf space needs products its own community will buy. A supplier wants visibility into orders and payments. Neither benefits much from a catalogue that leaves the rest of the transaction in a tangle. Dropee’s marketplace and software addressed ordering, stock information and customer purchasing patterns as connected pieces of work.
Ng’s explanation of the retailer’s position was rooted in the size of the shop. A small outlet cannot offer everything. It has to make choices about what deserves a place on the shelf. Helping owners find goods likely to sell quickly therefore matters alongside helping them find a lower price. The useful recommendation is the one that fits the neighbourhood.
Who sells it?
Find a suitable wholesale partner.
Will it sell?
Choose stock for the local customer.
When do I pay?
Match buying with access to credit.
Financing became part of that work too. Ng has spoken about small shops struggling to establish the credibility needed for support from banks or suppliers. Their need for cash flow could be pressing precisely when their access to it was weakest. A buying platform had to take account of the money between placing an order and selling the goods.
Learning to ask for help
Building the company also meant becoming somebody else’s student. In 2019, Ng and Rahim took part in the first PwC-MDEC Immersion programme. Over six months, they were paired with PwC deals partner Yennie Tan. The programme brought startup founders and professional-services partners into a mentoring exchange, ending with a fireside chat and graduation in November.
That is a useful detail in a founder’s biography. An ambition to improve an old industry does not remove the need to learn how a business should be run. Mentoring puts an experienced outsider close enough to examine decisions. Ng has also occupied the other chair, mentoring through startup events and programmes including Techstars’ Startup Weekend and Startup Victoria’s Female Founders.
Dropee joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch. In January 2022, it announced a US$7 million Series A combining equity and debt, led by returning investor Vynn Capital. Those milestones gave a company concerned with wholesale purchasing a place in the international startup conversation. Its original customers still needed the same rather concrete things: stock, workable terms and a transaction they could trust.
A place at the table, and something to say
Ng’s interest in access reached beyond the merchant-supplier relationship. In 2020, she described the experience of being in conference sessions with too few women, where her ideas could be drowned out or dismissed. Her argument for diversity concerned the quality of the discussion as well as who received an invitation to speak.
In June 2022, UNCTAD appointed her an eTrade for Women advocate for Southeast Asia. She served across the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 terms. The initiative brings women building digital businesses into a community and into policy conversations. She identified the appointment as a career highlight. It offered a way to help women in technology and traditional businesses take part in digital trade.
The practical work included partnering on a masterclass for women digital entrepreneurs in Kuala Lumpur in July 2023. Her public invitation described four days of learning and meeting peers, with grants available. The gesture was consistent with the business she had built: get people access to useful knowledge, useful counterparts and a route to the next step.
By 2024, her account of Borong’s DigitalNiaga work was specific about the obstacles. Internet access, digital skills, education and gender bias could all affect whether a woman-led business adopted technology. Training covered identifying suitable tools and making a business more bankable. A product demo alone would leave a fair amount of that work undone.
“Be very curious about your customers.”
Lennise Ng, on winning customers, 2024
The customer gets a vote
Her advice to founders has the plainness of someone who has had to sell things. In a 2024 session for the Alpha Startups for Women programme, she urged founders to speak with prospective customers about their work and immediate problems before spending on advertising. Find where those customers spend time. Explain the problem you can solve. Make trying the product straightforward.
She also put arithmetic into the conversation: know the cost of getting a customer and avoid wasting investor money. Trust and credibility should come from delivering value. It is an undramatic prescription, which is part of its appeal. An owner placing an order has little reason to care how exciting the supplier’s pitch sounded elsewhere.
Outside that work, food and music remain topics she can happily talk about at length. Her entertainment choices include The Godfather and Sherlock; her ice cream choice is Valrhona chocolate. The future musician has not vanished entirely. The commercial interests simply became harder to ignore.
The next introduction
Dropee became Borong in 2023. The company went on to rank second in the Financial Times’ Asia-Pacific high-growth list in 2025 and first in 2026. Those are rankings of revenue growth, and a milestone for the business Ng helped create. Borong’s current leadership page names Aizat Rahim as CEO and co-founder.
Ng now appears as a managing partner at Redwood Global Capital, with her Borong co-founding role part of her background. In October 2026, she moderated a discussion on scaling, funding and strategic exits at Alliance Bank’s BizSmart Business Conference. The territory has widened from finding a supplier to helping businesses think about the capital and structure for their next stage.
The continuity lies in the introductions. A musician and a buyer. A retailer and a wholesaler. A founder and a mentor. A business and the people who might fund its future. Ng began with a family example of how much one connection could change. She has spent much of her career working on ways to make the next one happen.