The seed of inspiration to build ViTrox derived from the camera given by Managing Director/President/CEO Chu Jenn Weng’s mother, which uplifted his interest in photography since he was young.
Marvellous things can come from the tiniest of seeds. Despite the family being underprivileged, his mother bought a second-hand analogue camera, knowing that he has always been passionate about photography. The heart-warming gift later inspired him to build his entrepreneurial career.
During Chu’s internship at Hewlett-Packard (HP), he was amazed by the use of a camera linked to a machine, which guided a robot to pick up a tiny object and move it with precision from one position to another in a fraction of a second. He later discovered this innovative technology – Machine Vision – which gave him a clear direction of what he wanted to do in the future.
Upon the completion of his internship, he was recruited by HP as a permanent employee and later received a training opportunity in the Silicon Valley of California. Through his visit to the HP Garage, he was inspired by the vision of two engineering graduates who started up their business in a garage, which has become a global tech giant. Chu was certain and confident that Malaysian engineering graduates could build the same dream. With that, a budding inspiration to establish a Malaysian high-tech company has been engraved in his mind.
Chu had the technical skills to build machine vision devices, but he needed someone to complement his technical skills if he wanted to start a business. Chu then invited Steven Siaw, who is now one of ViTrox’s co-founders, to join his team to provide their first machine vision solutions to a local customer. In Steven’s eyes, he found a fellow engineer who was passionate about technological innovations and equally adept at dealing with the needs of the outside world.
Hence, both of them decided to take the entrepreneurial leap to establish ViTrox to develop and supply machine vision solutions. In 2000, the duo founded ViTrox Technology Sdn Bhd. The name is a combination of two words, “vision” and “electronics”, reflecting the grand ambitions they had from the beginning.
The duo was joined by Yeoh Shih Hoong, a first-class honours graduate from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), who turned down offers from big-name companies to team up with them. “He took the risk to join us at the time when we had nothing to show, but only our vision and our determination,” Chu said. Yeoh Shih Hoong joined ViTrox as the first employee and eventually became one of the Executive Directors of ViTrox.
ViTrox's parent company was listed on Bursa's Mesdaq market in 2005 and on the main board in 2009.The name "ViTrox" drew its inspiration from "Vision" and "Electronics". With that idea, ViTrox has expanded to cover a broad spectrum of solutions, including machine vision and embedded electronics, over the years.
