Hussain Shimhaz · Malé · Singapore
Thirty years of learning the hard way, so the next investor doesn't have to.
I started on the ramp at Malé airport, learned marketing by building the first Centralized Marketing Department inside the country's largest company, spent nine years in oil trading in Singapore, then co-owned a resort from bare island to sale. Today I am building a technology company between Indonesia and Singapore.
Along the way I have learned most of the expensive lessons this region can teach. I share them with a small number of investors and partners who are building here too.
Loama Resort Maldives, developed 2011–2013
The market, this week
Updated 30 Sept 2026 · Ministry of Tourism and Environment, via the MMA Statistics Database
Tourist arrivals, 2026 to date
1,571,980
through September
September, year on year
-0.5%
148,800 arrivals
Top source markets
China · Russia
31% of arrivals between them
Full year 2025
2.25 million
Articles
November 2026 · Inside the industry
Is there anything else I could do for you? Yes, get me a bed.
A hotel sold my room while I was on my way to it. A repair shop wanted to keep my phone for two days. Both were correct at every step, and both finished with the same trained question. I think it is the biggest blunder in modern customer service, and one of them handed the job to a competitor by asking it.
November 2026 · Banking and credit
Billions of Dollars Earned, Yet We're Still Dollar-Poor
The Maldives earns billions of dollars a year from tourism and still can't put dollars in its own banks. After two decades of shortage, the question worth asking is where the earnings arrive and whether the laws already on the books are being enforced.
October 2026 · Inside the industry
The bird he made without being asked. A lesson worth putting in the manual.
A waiter used to fold coconut leaves into birds for the children who came into his restaurant. No manager asked for it, no standard required it, and it cost the resort nothing. One boy carried his around for the rest of the day, and there's no price you could put on that. Gestures like that are where service standards come from, because the good ones get noticed and written down, which is how the bed decoration you see on arrival got there. But writing the gesture down is also what kills it. The way out is to put the lesson in the manual and keep the act out of it, then train people to invent their own.
Technology, this week
Latest from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Google AI, MIT Technology Review and BBC
BBC Technology12 h ago
Global tech stocks plunge as US midterms add to AI slowdown fears
Investors have reacted to possible tougher scrutiny of data centre construction and the AI industry.
BBC Technology15 h ago
The engine parts that 'fight the laws of the universe'
Investment has surged into the making of jet turbine blades - an extremely difficult component to make.
OpenAI19 h ago
Cult.fit builds operational muscle with Codex
Cult.fit is using Codex to help teams across functions build tools, move faster, and change how work gets done.
Google DeepMind22 h ago
Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash: Fast and cost-effective with longer clips
Google AI22 h ago
Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash: Fast and cost-effective with longer clips
Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash brings native 15-second video generation and editing, stronger consistency, and 30% lower pricing.
OpenAI22 h ago
Australian universities are creating AI-native graduates
Australian universities are expanding access to ChatGPT and bringing AI into teaching and learning to prepare students for an AI-enabled workforce.
AboutThirty years across the Maldives, Singapore and Indonesia, told chapter by chapter.
Read the backgroundWhat I'm building
Launching · technology
Merawin Core, Singapore
Four years in the making. A Singapore technology company, with a co-founder on the ground there, built to take Indonesian furniture and hospitality products to the world: a piece of software the trade has not seen before, opening the furniture business to anyone who wants to be part of it. Details when it is registered.
Vision
Years of thinking, and years of making. The business models and research I have built over the last four years are my vision for this region, and I have decided to bring them to the surface, one at a time, very soon. Each will say what it needs: investors, finance, or technical partners.
In the making
Things I am building, and the ones I am looking for a partner on.
I still call them dreams. Some of them come true.
Where I can help
Resort development, without the mistakes we made
For investors coming into the Maldives with an island, a lease or a concept: what the feasibility must include, how the investment and the local partnership should be structured, what goes wrong between design, permits and contractors, and what pre-opening really costs. Hands-on experience, shared.
Sourcing and trading, Indonesia to the Maldives
Through PT. Merawin Mitra Grup's operation in Indonesia: supplier networks, quality control and shipping for resorts and projects that need furniture and hospitality products sourced properly.
AI-driven business systems
Systems I build and run myself: connecting ERP data, agent workflows and reporting an owner can trust. Available to other owner-run businesses through Merawin Core.
Expertise
Start a conversation
Tell me what you are trying to build.
Every message is read personally. I reply to the ones where I believe I can be useful.