Our Company
A small practice with a clear purpose.
Bantam Press was established in Subang Jaya to help Malaysians read their own financial records — calmly, clearly, and without being steered toward decisions they have not yet reached on their own.
Back to HomeOur Story
Bantam Press began with a straightforward observation: a great many small business owners in Malaysia — people running cafés, trading businesses, tutoring practices, and family shops — were filing their accounts away without reading them. Not out of carelessness, but because the language of financial documents had never been explained to them in terms they could hold onto.
The practice was founded by a group of educators who had spent years working alongside accountants and tax practitioners, and who had noticed the gap between what professionals understood and what their clients were actually taking away from each meeting. The goal of Bantam Press is not to replace professional advice, but to prepare people to receive it more usefully — and to read their own records between appointments without needing to ask for an interpretation each time.
The name comes from the letterpress tradition: a bantam press is a small, careful machine, suited to limited-run work where precision matters more than volume. That quality — careful, considered, unhurried — is what we try to bring to every session.
Our programmes are held at our reading room in Subang Heritage Row. Participants work with their own documents wherever possible. Sessions are small, and there is no pressure to move faster than the material warrants.
"The aim is not that you leave knowing more theory. It is that you leave able to open your own records and read them with a settled, informed eye."
— Bantam Press founding statement
The Team
Sharifah Lim
Programme Director
Leads the bookkeeping and small business account reading programmes, drawing on twelve years of experience working alongside small business owners across Selangor and KL.
Tan Nee Wai
Tax Education Lead
Leads the Household Tax Reading Programme, with a particular focus on the practical structure of Malaysian personal income tax forms for salaried and self-employed participants.
Rajan Balakrishnan
Family Business Adviser
Works with families on the three-month engagement programme, helping them map the boundary between personal and business finances and build sustainable habits for ongoing review.
How We Work
Participant Privacy
Participants are never required to share specific figures with others in the group. Documents brought to sessions remain the participant's own and are not retained by us.
Education Scope
Our programmes are educational. We do not prepare accounts, file tax returns, manage money, or offer financial advice regulated under Malaysian law. Participants are always encouraged to consult a licensed professional for those needs.
Small Group Sizes
We keep group numbers low so that each participant has space to ask questions and work through material at a pace that suits them. We do not maximise enrolment at the cost of attention.
Written Summaries
Where a programme concludes with a written summary, that document is prepared specifically for the participant and reflects their situation — not a generic template.
Malaysian Context
All material is drawn from Malaysian tax forms, Malaysian accounting conventions, and examples relevant to local small business practice. We do not adapt generic overseas curricula to a local setting.
Plain Language
Technical terms are introduced only when they are genuinely necessary, and always explained in plain English before being used further. The aim is comprehension, not familiarity with jargon.
Our Approach
Financial literacy in a Malaysian small business context
Many small business owners across Selangor and the Klang Valley manage their financial records in a notebook, a spreadsheet, or a basic accounting programme. The records exist; the difficulty is knowing what to look for in them and what the figures actually mean for the health of the business. Bantam Press works directly with those documents — whatever form they take — to build the reading skills that make them useful.
The Malaysian personal income tax system offers a range of reliefs and rebates that salaried professionals and small business owners may be entitled to claim. Understanding the structure of the tax form — how income, reliefs, and rebates interact — helps participants approach their annual filing with more clarity and fewer surprises. The Household Tax Reading Programme at Bantam Press walks through that structure in detail, working from the actual LHDN form.
For family businesses where the boundary between household expenditure and business cash flow has become unclear over time, the Small Family Business Finance Engagement provides a structured opportunity to review that separation, develop a workable approach to owner draws, and begin planning for tax obligations and simple savings practices on both sides of the ledger.
A place in the next cohort
Write to us when you are ready
There is no pressure to decide quickly. If you would like to understand which programme is the closest match to your situation, we are glad to have a brief exchange first.
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