About Novabstone
Built in Johor Bahru, shaped by a decade of hard advisory work
Novabstone exists because the mid-market in Malaysia needed consulting that combines the rigour of a large firm with the directness of a senior independent adviser.
Who Novabstone is and what we stand for
A consulting firm is ultimately its people and its standards — here are ours.
Novabstone was founded in Johor Bahru in 2017 by a team of former corporate managers and strategy practitioners who had grown frustrated with the gap between consulting recommendations and practical implementation. The founding team had spent a combined total of over 30 years working inside Malaysian businesses across manufacturing, logistics, and financial services — not consulting to them from the outside, but running operations, managing P&Ls, and sitting in the rooms where consequential decisions are made. That operational background is the defining characteristic of the firm. We are not a firm of career consultants who have never had to implement their own advice. Every principal at Novabstone has held a line role — regional general manager, operations director, chief strategy officer — and has personally experienced what it means to receive a consulting report on a Monday and be expected to act on it by Friday. That experience makes us more specific in our recommendations, more realistic about timelines, and more direct when we think a client is pursuing a path that is unlikely to work. Since 2017, Novabstone has completed over 60 engagements across five sectors, with clients ranging from family-owned manufacturers in Johor with RM 30 million in revenue, to publicly listed property developers managing land banks in excess of RM 1 billion. Our team of eight consultants maintains a deliberately small client load — no more than twelve active engagements at any time — so that each client receives genuine senior attention throughout the project, not just at the kick-off and the final presentation.
How we work — and where we draw the line
Transparency about process and limits is not a disclaimer — it is a form of respect for our clients.
Every Novabstone engagement follows a consistent discipline: we begin with a structured diagnostic before we propose a scope, we commit to a fixed fee before work starts, and we track output metrics after implementation so we can show what actually changed. We do not sub-contract delivery to junior analysts without the client's knowledge, and we do not extend engagements by making problems appear more complex than they are. Our work is concentrated in Johor Bahru, the Klang Valley, and Penang, with occasional engagements in East Malaysia when the sector fit is strong. We do not serve clients outside Malaysia, and we do not take engagements where the primary success criterion is influencing a government approval or a regulatory decision — those outcomes are outside our control and we will not price as if they are not. The azure-trust clarity that underpins our brand identity is not aesthetic decoration; it reflects a genuine operating principle: that a client who understands exactly what they are buying, what will be measured, and what the limits are will always be a better client to serve — and will get better results. Novabstone's long-term goal is not to grow into a large regional firm. It is to be the firm that mid-market Malaysian businesses call first when the situation is genuinely complex.
“What set Novabstone apart was that they pushed back when we were wrong. In April 2022 we were convinced we needed a new distribution model — they showed us the data that said our existing model was fine and the problem was in procurement. That honesty saved us from a RM 2 million restructuring that would not have fixed anything.”
Tuan Haji Azman Yusof, Executive Chairman, Prisma Holdings
Reach the Novabstone team
We respond to all enquiries within one business day.