Elica Sdn Bhd's Bobby Ting would, every now and then, get a request for funds to build homes for the poor and he usually obliged. However, he soon realised that this would not be sustainable.
He decided to take matters into his own hands and instead of just contributing the building materials, Elica would do its part by constructing affordable, long-lasting and relatively safer houses.
"One of the first few that we did was for this woman whose house in the Batu Kawa area had burnt down. She baked for a living and I think the equipment had malfunctioned. Luckily, no one was hurt," Ting says.
"Someone reached out to us to help rebuild her house. Initially, the people soliciting funds wanted just enough money to buy some building materials. But being in the building industry, we knew that a few thousand ringgit would not go very far."
The well-meaning party would just throw together some zinc sheets, plywood and slap on a bit of paint with that sum of money.
Ting and his team then came up with the solution involving containers. "Shen-tel and I engaged a family friend of ours, renowned designer David McKay from Australia. He came over to Malaysia for about six weeks and we went through the construction and design issues of creating living spaces using shipping containers," Ting says.