[KUALA LUMPUR] Daniel Ma, the founder and chief executive officer of Singapore-based ice cream vending machine manufacturer HappyIce, believes that, after being in the business for 10 years, the time is right to finally head abroad.

He has already identified five South-east Asia markets for expansion in the next 12 months – Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

“What’s encouraging for us is that, when we shared our expansion plans with one of our clients, he wanted to know when we could get started. This gave us the courage to go further and explore the untapped markets in the region,” he said.