Dr May Chan and Dr Reuben Sim of Dental Boutique won the top prize for the second year in a row at a gala ceremony on the Gold Coast.
By Matt Ong, Amila Dedovic and Camilla Jansen
Published by Business News Australia
In this Image: Dr Reuben Sim (DEN0001527916) – Registered Dentist, General Registration.
Dr May Chan (DEN0001527915) – Registered Dentist, General Registration.
The husband-and-wife duo’s accomplishment equals the record made in 2020 by Fung Lam, founder of e-commerce and dropshipping powerhouse New Aim, who incidentally just recently took home top honours at the 2023 Ethnic Business Awards.
Cultural diversity has always been par for the course in the Australian Young Entrepreneur Awards, not by design but based entirely on the merit of the successful ventures whose founders are shaping the way business is done in Australia and the world.
Finalists in the 2023 initiative clocked up almost $2 billion in revenue in FY23 and recorded $142 million in profit. That overall profitability for the cohort comes despite a prevalence of blitzscaling companies that are purposefully yet to break even as they reinvest aggressively to capture market share.
Companies in the 2023 awards have raised $820 million in external capital since founding, but that funding is highly concentrated and only pertains to a quarter of the finalists. The remaining three-quarters have funded organically, showing that bootstrapping is alive and well, including for Chan and Sim who also won the Health & Medicine category – their third time doing so.
In contrast, the Trailblazer winner – also from Melbourne – turned to public markets to raise capital at the start of this year. For Alexander Jannink, who co-founded AI-driven road safety technology company Acusensus (ASX: ACE), growth cannot come fast enough as every contract the company signs will hopefully mean fewer deaths in Australia and worldwide caused by distracted drivers on their smartphones.
