what small business? if your answer is 'duno', then we cant answer liao 

kalo stall cukup..kalo kedai memang x ler..

If business is service based, then RM20k should be ok.
If want to sell some products, this figure surely is not enough, unless you can get credit term from supplier.

YES. and NO.

Depending on your business.

Too little information, TS.

chatime definitely not enough.

Stall at malls not enough la. How much is the rental? I heard the monthly rental is rm4000 is certain mall. 2+1 deposit already cost u rm12k. U have rm8k left to buy machines and ingredients.

Rm12k is just for renting the place. Renovation could cost u few thousand, signboard and license 1-2k. Make it rm15k to set up. U calculate how much is ur machines, fridge, and ingredients cost la.. Unless u rent the fridge and machines la.

obviously not enough for ur scope.

if u open roadside burger stalll, then more than enough la

20K is enough for a small online buisness,if buka kedai is a big no,gerai makan maybe still can..

I have no experience setting up a stall. I open a shop. I personally think shops/stalls in malls are much more complicated.

My friend recently open stalls in mid valley and empire mall. If u heard of the name akachan no hoppe, selling Japanese rice balls. I roughly calculate, it needs rm100k to start. But he did it  BIG la.

Depends on your location and product. If locations like MV definitely not enough. The Curve flea market is already charging like 120-180 per day depending on your spot.

If you have a lot of products of course you need to get a lot more ingredients.

If it's just a simple setup at a 'reasonable' it should be enough for startup, you need to take account of your running costs. It might be more than you think.

i kinda agree with this..
and dont need to aim big mall first,aim for those simple shopping mall,and then focus on ur advertisement on fb or lowyat..

build a customer list first..when u confident slowly go higher..

deploy a base by base..dont rush..

20k if plan wrong..sekejap aje gone..

20k for initial set-up, with nothing left to cushion subsequent operational costs?

NO way.

How daring of you to assume that you'd turn an awesome profit upon day one of opening.

Rental and deposits gonna cost more than that already in shopping mall..

+100.

Talking from experience. Be prepared with fund capital minimum 10 months to 1 year to cover rental n ur minimum living cost. New biz takes time to take off....my ex boss when open new branch standby minimum 1.5 years without any meaningful operating profit...

agreed.. my budget of rm40k also not sufficient let alone 20k...
if anyone know a good place to rent inside a shopping mall, fnb item
(budget for rent is rm2.5k monthly)
do let me know...

It's hard to say. I don't have any biz during my 1st month. Biz starts coming in from 2nd month but not enough to cover operational cost. It is normal for new biz. To be safe, u must have enough money to sustain for 1 year in case ur monthly sales is not enough to cover ur monthly costs. Not being negative but u must prepare for worst case scenario in biz. Must always have plan B, plan C or more...

hello taikos,

i am starting uo a business with quite the same fund, would like to ask if opening up a sdn bhd directly or just start small with enterprise ?

Wintersun,

you don't need 100K to register, a sdn. bhd. can be registered without any money in it.  In order to register for government of malaysia tenders and other GLC's business they would ask for your paid up capital and that can be the requirement for 100K.  Now, paid up capital, if I remember correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong) can be achieved in 2 main ways:-

1.  To place a RM 100K deposit into the company account and take the deposit slip and give it to your company secretary who will then charge you a service fee to complete the 100K paid up capital process or;

2.  To use the various deposits that you will be getting throughout the time that you are in business and provide to the company secretary who will then charge you a service fee to complete the 100K pad up capital process.

It all depends on the speed of your requirement and upon providing the deposit slip to your company secretary, you can immediately take out the money, or at least that was what I did when I started about 9 years ago.  And further more you don't need to have 100K in profit.

The Government of Malaysia also has tenders which are for enterprise based companies and I believe that it is usually under RM 200K or so (again I am not sure you will have to check on this).  But if your desire is to do business with the Government of Malaysia, you would have to register yourself with eperolehan and to get the necessary bidangs to be able to transact with the government.  This applies for either Sdn. Bhd. or enterprise.

About the 20K budget to start a business again, everyone in the thread has given excellent advice.  I can relate my own personal experience.  I had bought a small tom yam kedai 3 years ago.  I had bought the shop (actually it was a "warong" under the tree in a taman), for RM 13,000.00, that included the 6 people (I was shocked because I didn't think I could buy people nowadays), 10 tables, 50 chairs, pots, pans, 2 cooking stalls, 6 drink stalls and others.  After paying the money, I had to put in another RM 3K for the purchase of the weekly ingredients.  Surprisingly, after 3 years and looking back at it again, I have never had to put into the business any other money.  The daily take was able to settle the daily operation costs (gaji and others) and since we bought our "groceries" weekly, the weekly take was able to settle that also.  It had been that way for the last 3 years with a slight change, where we had gone from under the tree to a proper shop lot, but that took about 2 1/2 years.  So good luck in your endeavor, and I am always excited to see the young people of malaysia interested in setting out on their own.  Have fun.

12 months.