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 31 Aug 2026 · Ministry of Tourism and Environment, via the MMA Statistics Database
Tourist arrivals, 2026 to date
1,423,180
through August
August, year on year
+1.7%
195,390 arrivals
Top source markets
China · Russia
31% of arrivals between them
Full year 2025
2.25 million
Articles
October 2026
Everything will have one leg broken. How the rules decide what lasts.
Two owners, two instincts, opposite results. One lost his temper over a broken sofa nobody wanted and was thought unreasonable for it. The other said yes to a bag of almonds, because why would he not, and paid for it in tools for the length of a build.
October 2026
An umbrella that keeps breaking is a sustainability problem. We just don't call it one.
A resort knew exactly where its outdoor umbrellas failed and exactly how to fix them. None of it reached the specification. The knowledge that decides whether a thing lasts on a Maldivian island already exists, inside these companies, and almost none of it is written down.
10-part series · 2024
Why is the Maldives unique?
Liveaboards, private islands, surf at the house reef, the art of doing nothing. Collected here for the first time.
Technology, this week
Latest from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Google AI, MIT Technology Review and BBC
BBC Technology7 h ago
Elon Musk says Tesla-SpaceX merger being considered
Musk says special committees within both companies have been formed to look at a possible mega-merger.
BBC Technology7 h ago
The tech helping crack decades-old cold cases
Investigative genetic genealogy can help hunt down criminals but raises worries over privacy.
BBC Technology10 h ago
Tech Life
The next generation of chip is thinner and flexible when compared to traditional silicon.
BBC Technology11 h ago
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wins dismissal of sister's lawsuit
A US district judge dismissed the case after Ann Altman had refused to attend an independent medical examination.
BBC Technology12 h ago
Google resolves cloud outage affecting UK banks and websites
Revolut was one of the hardest hit, with banking services going down for many customers.
MIT Technology Review15 h ago
The new economics of enterprise AI
Imagine your company just discovered electricity. At first only a few machines run on it, and nobody worries about efficiency — consumption is low and the value is obvious. But once electricity becomes infrastructure, every process depen…
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.