Printing, photography, a global brand, restaurants, fragrance. We read serial builders as unfocused. Pakdin shows the opposite — every move connected by one thread: he builds things that make people feel something.
We have a habit of mistaking movement for confusion. When a founder builds one thing and stays there for twenty years, we call them focused. When a founder moves from one industry to another, we quietly assume they got bored, or failed, or never knew what they wanted in the first place. That instinct is usually wrong. And few people prove it more cleanly than Shariffuddin Bujang — the man most of Malaysia knows simply as Pakdin.
Look at the resume and it reads like a man who can't sit still. Printing. Wedding photography. A global brand under Nasty Worldwide that now reaches 72 countries. Restaurants — Lomak Salai, rooted in his hometown of Tampin, and Nasi Campur Pagi Malam in Bangsar. And now NBDY World, a luxury fragrance house. Five chapters, five different industries. On the surface, that looks like a builder who keeps changing his mind.
Read it again, and a pattern appears that is anything but unfocused.
Every category Pakdin has entered shares one quality: it was a space where nobody local had done it quite right. Printing and photography were crowded, commoditised trades — until you treated them as craft instead of service. A homegrown brand going global was something Malaysians were told to admire from a distance, not attempt. A restaurant could be just a place to eat, or it could be a room that made you feel something the moment you walked in. Fragrance, the hardest category in retail to sell online, was wide open for anyone willing to sell a feeling instead of a scent. Each time, Pakdin walked into a category that looked saturated or impossible and found the version of it that no one else was building.
That is not pivoting. Pivoting implies the last thing didn't work, so you abandon it for something safer. Pakdin's moves run the other way. Each one builds on the last — the discipline of printing feeds the eye of a photographer; the eye of a photographer feeds the instinct of a brand-builder; the brand-builder's understanding of identity feeds a restaurant and, eventually, a perfume. This isn't a man fleeing failure. It's a man compounding a single skill across different surfaces.
And the skill is specific. Pakdin builds things that make people feel something. The restaurants don't just serve food; they hang Sudirman, P. Ramlee, and Lee Chong Wei on the walls, write in Negeri Sembilan dialect, and turn a meal into a small act of belonging. NBDY World doesn't just sell fragrance; it sells the line "Nobody gets this. Except you." — exclusivity wrapped around intimacy. Even his global brand carries a stubborn local pride; in his own words, "even though our company is from Tampin, our dream is to dominate the world market." The product changes. The emotional engine underneath it never does.
This is rarer than it sounds. Most founders find one thing that works and go deep, because depth is safer and the market rewards it. Going wide is dangerous — every new category resets your credibility to zero, forces you to learn a new game, and invites exactly the criticism Pakdin attracts: that he's spread thin, that he should pick a lane. But the criticism assumes the lane is the industry. For Pakdin, the lane was never printing or food or perfume. The lane is emotion. He has stayed in it for his entire career.
It helps to remember where he started. A man who once slept on a factory floor beside his wife to keep a young company alive is not someone who changes industries out of restlessness. That kind of person changes because he has learned, the hard way, that the thing he is actually good at — making people feel something, and building a business around that feeling — travels. It is not bound to one product. So he keeps carrying it into new rooms.
There is a lesson here for Malaysian founders, and it cuts against the standard advice. We tell builders to niche down, to own one category, to resist the temptation to wander. That advice is right if your edge is a product. It is wrong if your edge is a capability. Pakdin's edge is a capability — an instinct for identity and belonging that no single industry can contain. The mistake isn't moving between categories. The mistake is moving without a thread.
So before you copy the surface of what Pakdin does — the brand, the restaurant, the fragrance — find your own thread first. Ask what you are actually good at when you strip away the industry. If the answer is a real capability and not just a product, then changing categories isn't a loss of focus. It's the most focused thing you can do. Pakdin keeps changing industries because he never changed his mind about what he was building. Most people just can't tell the difference yet.
Related Reading
- Pakdin Tak Jual Produk. Dia Jual Malaysia.
- Dari Tampin ke 72 Negara: Kisah Pakdin Yang Ramai Tak Tahu
- Sime Darby's Quiet Reinvention: From Plantation Giant to Malaysia's EV and Urban Future
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Pakdin and what businesses has he founded? Pakdin, whose full name is Shariffuddin Bujang, is a Malaysian entrepreneur known for founding multiple successful businesses across different industries including Nasty Worldwide (a global brand in 72 countries), NBDY World (a luxury fragrance house), Lomak Salai, and Nasi Campur Pagi Malam restaurants. He's known for his willingness to move between industries rather than staying focused on a single business.
Why does Pakdin keep changing industries instead of staying with one business? Rather than being unfocused or indecisive, Pakdin's pattern shows he enters industries where local entrepreneurs haven't yet done it right—treating printing and photography as craft rather than commodity service, building a homegrown global brand, creating restaurants that evoke feeling, and selling fragrance as an experience. Each move reflects a strategic philosophy of identifying underserved or mishandled market categories.
What is Nasty Worldwide and how successful is it? Nasty Worldwide is Pakdin's global brand that has successfully expanded to reach 72 countries, making it one of his most internationally successful ventures. It demonstrates his ability to build a homegrown Malaysian brand that competes on a global scale, something he was told Malaysians should admire from a distance rather than attempt.
What is NBDY World and why did Pakdin enter the fragrance industry? NBDY World is Pakdin's luxury fragrance house, representing his entry into what is considered the hardest retail category to sell online. He chose fragrance because the industry was wide open for entrepreneurs willing to sell a feeling and experience rather than just a product, aligning with his pattern of identifying underserved market opportunities.
