We help small businesses use AI on their own terms
Damar Collective is based in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. We work with owners and their staff directly — not through layers of project managers or packaged products.
How we came to be doing this
Damar Collective grew out of a simple observation: the businesses in Kota Kinabalu that would benefit most from AI tools were the ones least likely to find a setup that suited them. Off-the-shelf assistants assumed English-only customers, nine-to-five schedules, and a level of technical confidence that most small-business owners don't have time to develop.
We started in early 2023 by working with a handful of local clinics and salons on a trial basis — no contracts, no upfront costs, just an honest look at whether the tools helped. In most cases they did, once the setup took the actual working patterns into account. We've been building on that approach since.
The name comes from damar, a tree resin used across Borneo for decades as a preservative and binding agent. It's a material that works quietly in the background, strengthening what's already there. That's roughly what we're trying to do with AI in a small-business context.
Our focus
We work on three specific tasks — booking assistance, multilingual reply drafting, and quarterly maintenance — and we don't stretch beyond them. Narrower scope means we understand the problems more deeply and make fewer costly mistakes in setup.
What we value
We'd rather tell a business owner that AI isn't right for them yet than sign them up for something that doesn't deliver. That keeps our reputation intact and gives us clients who are actually getting value from what we've set up.
Where we work
Most of our clients are in Kota Kinabalu and nearby towns in Sabah. We do travel for the right engagement, but we prefer working with businesses we can visit in person at least once during setup.
The people who do the work
There are three of us. We stay small on purpose — it keeps setup quality high and means you deal with the same person from start to finish.
Razif Harun
Founder & Setup Lead
Handles initial assessments and setup for each client. Previously worked in operations consulting for Sabah hospitality businesses.
Lim Wei Xian
Language & Tone Specialist
Builds the reply-drafting setups and manages the glossary work for multilingual clients. Fluent in Mandarin, English and Bahasa Malaysia.
Preethi Selvam
Maintenance & Review
Runs the quarterly check-in visits and writes the summary notes. Tamil-speaking, which helps with our clients who receive messages in Tamil.
How we hold ourselves to account
These aren't marketing points — they're the standards we check against when we review our own work each quarter.
Data handling that we can explain
We document what customer data flows through each setup, in plain language, before we begin. No surprises after the fact.
Staff walkthrough before going live
We don't hand over a setup and leave. A session with the staff who'll use it daily is included in every engagement.
Escalation paths for edge cases
Every tool we set up has a defined point at which control passes to a human. We test that path before sign-off.
Written summary after each visit
Every quarterly check-in ends with a short document — what changed, what was retired, whether the numbers support continuing.
Tone accuracy reviews
For reply-drafting clients, we review a batch of live drafts at three weeks to check tone drift and correct the glossary where needed.
Clean exit support
If an arrangement isn't working, we help unwind it properly — removing integrations, returning data, and explaining what to look for next time.
What we actually know
Small-business AI integration in Malaysia sits at a particular crossroads. The tools available are mostly designed for large-organisation contexts — English-dominant, single-timezone, with dedicated IT support. Adapting them for a three-person clinic in Kota Kinabalu that receives messages in four languages across irregular hours takes deliberate effort and local knowledge.
We understand the Sabah working calendar — the variation in public holidays across federal and state observances, the early-close patterns before major celebrations, the difference in messaging volume during school-holiday periods. These details matter when setting up a booking assistant that's supposed to handle availability accurately.
We also understand that the value of an AI tool in a small-business context isn't determined at setup — it's determined six months in, when the pricing has changed, one staff member has left, and a product line has been added. That's why we structure maintenance into our service model rather than treating it as optional.
Damar Collective works with clinics, salons, repair workshops, tutoring centres, food businesses and professional service firms across Sabah. The common thread is that they're managing a reasonable volume of customer communication and find that the coordination overhead — booking, confirming, replying — takes more time than it should.
Happy to answer questions before you decide anything
A short call or message is usually the fastest way to work out whether our services would suit your setup. No commitment either way.
Get in Touch