For the first time on a public platform, ZUS Coffee co-founder and Group COO Venon Tian and CEO Ian Chua confirmed the Malaysian coffee chain has surpassed RM1.0 billion in annual revenue on a popular business podcast that aired in April 2026. Here is the full story: the milestone, the man, and everything that had to happen to get there.
Check out the numbers that ZUS Coffee has racked to-date up over the years since it’s inception:
Malaysia now has its first homegrown coffee chain to break the billion-ringgit revenue barrier — and the moment it was publicly revealed happened not in a press release, but in a candid conversation on a podcast.
Venon Tian and Ian Chua sat down with Dato Sri Idris Jala and Leon Jala on The Game of Impossible and answered a direct question about the company’s annual revenue. His reply was three words: “More than a billion.”
It was, by any measure, a landmark moment for Malaysian business. ZUS Coffee — a brand that did not exist until November 2019, that opened its first outlet in a 200 sq ft kiosk in KLCC, and that weathered two national lockdowns in its first two years, had become a billion-ringgit enterprise in under five years.
Why RM1 Billion Changes What We Know About Malaysian Coffee
To appreciate the scale of what ZUS Coffee has accomplished, consider the context. Malaysia’s coffee market has long been dominated by international chains — Starbucks chief among them. For a local brand to not only enter that market but to overtake the global giant and reach ten-figure revenue in fewer than five years is extraordinary.
Dato Sri Idris Jala noted on the podcast that his findings confirmed that ZUS Coffee surpassed Starbucks in Malaysia in 2024, making it the country’s number one coffee chain. The RM1 billion figure confirms that position and signals that Malaysian consumer brands can compete at the highest level.
For context: ZUS Coffee currently operates 1,080 stores across Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Brunei. In 2024 alone, the company opened 670 new locations — roughly one store every single day.
Who Is Venon Tian — ZUS Coffee’s Co-Founder and Group COO?
Venon Tian is not your typical F&B executive. He is, at his core, an operator, a builder of systems, a scaler of operations, a person who looks at an inefficient process and instinctively figures out how to fix it.
Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Venon attended St. John’s Institution before enrolling at Taylor’s College for his A-Level, the pre-university pathway that would, indirectly, set everything else in motion. “Asian parent again, right? It’s always either being an engineer, a doctor, or a lawyer,” he said on the podcast. He followed through on the law path, earning an LLB (Hons) from Northumbria University in the UK.
But Taylor’s University and law school gave him something more valuable than a vocation. They gave him a way of thinking — structured, analytical, comfortable with complexity — that he would later apply not to courtrooms, but to coffee kiosks, supply chains, and app architecture.
From A RM19,000 Ang Pow To A Billion-Ringgit Coffee Empire
In the podcast, Venon shared that he used his own RM19,000 savings to enter into Taylor’s College due to his family’s financial constraints at the time.
Fast forward, after returning from the UK in 2011, Venon joined a listed e-commerce company, quickly earning a reputation as a “cowboy” — an energetic, disruptive presence in a legacy corporate environment. His employers hired a business consultant to manage him. That consultant became the shared mentor who introduced Venon to Ian Chua, ZUS Coffee’s CEO.
Before ZUS, Venon co-founded Asia Digital Capital, built eziPOD — an IoT-powered coin laundry chain with 50–60 locations — and sold goods on eBay UK as a student to support his family. In December 2020, he joined ZUS Coffee as the eighth and final co-founder, the “Last Avenger,” taking on the COO role.
- 2019 – First Store Opens. 200 sq ft kiosk, KLCC. App-first from day one.
- 2020 – COVID-19 Validates the Model. MCO forces Malaysia online. ZUS is already there. Venon joins as COO.
- 2021 – 60 Stores. First audacious target hit despite two national lockdowns.
- 2022 – 180 Stores. Growth flywheel accelerates. Playbook begins to formalise.
- 2023 – 360 Stores, Philippines Entry. EY Emerging Entrepreneur of Year. International expansion begins.
- 2024 – 1 Store Per Day, Beats Starbucks. 670 stores in one year. ZUS becomes Malaysia’s No. 1 coffee chain.
- Apr 2026 – RM1 Billion Confirmed, 1,080 Stores. First public revenue disclosure. Morocco entry imminent. Target: 4,000 stores by 2030.
How ZUS Coffee’s App-First Strategy Built A Billion-Ringgit Moat
One of the most striking numbers in ZUS Coffee’s story is not the revenue figure — it’s the app adoption rate. Over 70% of ZUS Coffee orders are placed through the company’s own app, compared to roughly 30% for Starbucks US. This gives ZUS an extraordinary data and operational advantage.
The model was Venon and Ian Chua’s core thesis from the start: apply e-commerce thinking to a physical coffee business. Build the app before you build the stores. Drive traffic digitally to open in cheaper, off-street locations. ZUS tracks ‘number of steps to complete an order’ as a north-star product metric.
When COVID-19 arrived in March 2020, ZUS was already integrated with Grab Express for delivery. “Everyone else was just scrambling to go online,” Venon recalled. “We were already digitally ready.” The result was a surge in orders at precisely the moment most competitors went dark.
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Five Lessons From Venon Tian’s Journey
Behind the billion-ringgit headline are years of unglamorous decisions and a philosophy that Venon articulates with disarming clarity. These are the principles that built ZUS Coffee.
ZUS Coffee’s Next Chapter: 4,000 Stores And A Global Brand
The RM1 billion milestone is not the destination — it’s a waypoint. Venon has set his personal goal as 4,000 ZUS Coffee stores by 2030. After Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Brunei, Morocco is next, marking ZUS Coffee’s first store outside ASEAN. Indonesia and Pakistan are also on the horizon.
The entire HQ talent base is Malaysian. The ambition, as Venon put it on the podcast, is to build something Malaysians can point to and say: we built this. From here. And it went to the world.
“Whatever that brings us today might not be taking us to tomorrow.”
— VENON TIAN · THE GAME OF IMPOSSIBLE PODCAST, APRIL 2026
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About the Author:
Ken Hoong is the co-founder of Uni Enrol and a contributing writer. Drawing on his close work with Uni Enrol’s counsellors, he brings keen insight into Malaysia’s evolving private higher education landscape and the shifting preferences of students in learning and career choices.
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