Khairul Aming’s RM2.3 million livestream proved that in Southeast Asia’s creator economy, trust — not advertising — is the ultimate currency.

On 19 February 2026, Khairul Amin Kamarulzaman — known across Southeast Asia simply as Khairul Aming, or “KA” — sat inside his own restaurant in Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur, and rewrote the playbook of modern commerce.

For 12 consecutive hours, the Malaysian chef-influencer hosted a TikTok Shop livestream that generated RM2.3 million (approximately SGD 736,000) in sales, making it the highest single-day livestream sales figure ever recorded on TikTok Shop Malaysia. No celebrity ambassadors. No massive advertising spend. No venture capital theatrics. Just a camera, a restaurant, and an audience of millions who trusted him enough to buy in real time. In an era where brands spend fortunes chasing attention, Khairul Aming achieved something far more difficult: loyalty at scale.

Khairul Aming is a 33-year-old Malaysian content creator, food entrepreneur, and social media personality with over 5.2 million TikTok followers, 4.1 million Instagram followers, and a growing YouTube presence of 235,000 subscribers. He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University in the United States and once worked in Malaysia’s oil and gas sector before pivoting entirely into digital content creation. His annual Ramadan series, “30 Hari 30 Resipi” (30 Days 30 Recipes), is so influential that supermarkets across Malaysia report stock shortages in cooking ingredients each time a new episode airs. His product line — anchored by the viral chilli paste Sambal Nyet Berapi — reported RM42 million (approximately SGD 13.4 million) in total group sales for 2024, a 110% jump from RM20 million the year prior.

From Factory Kitchens to the Frontlines of Malaysian E-Commerce

What Khairul Aming has built is no longer merely a personal brand. It is an economic ecosystem powered by culture, consistency, and digital intimacy.

The 33-year-old creator launched Sambal Nyet Berapi in 2021, selling more than 540,000 bottles in its first year alone and generating RM7.5 million (approximately SGD 2.4 million) in revenue. By 2022, annual sales had surged to RM14 million (approximately SGD 4.48 million). Rather than relying on conventional retail distribution, KA embraced a direct-to-consumer strategy through TikTok Shop, turning livestreams into instant purchasing funnels and transforming followers into customers in real time.

The momentum only accelerated. His second product, Dendeng Nyet Berapi, sold 80,000 packets in under three minutes during a single livestream — a feat that quickly became national news in Malaysia. By 2024, Rendang Nyet had joined the lineup, and cumulative annual group sales surpassed RM42 million (approximately SGD 13.4 million), marking Khairul Aming as one of the most commercially successful digital creators Malaysia has ever produced.

Unlike many influencer-led businesses that peak with virality and disappear with the algorithm, KA’s empire expanded because audiences perceived him not as a salesman, but as someone authentic — a creator who cooked, experimented, failed publicly, and built alongside his community.

The Night TikTok Malaysia’s Record Books Were Rewritten

On 19 February 2026, just weeks before Ramadan, Khairul Aming hosted what TikTok Shop Malaysia described as its largest “shoppertainment” event to date: a 12-hour non-stop “All Star LIVE” broadcast staged entirely inside his restaurant, Rembayung.

The livestream was designed to resemble a traditional Ramadan bazaar. Instead of a static sales presentation, KA moved through different product stations inside the restaurant, each representing curated local brands — digitally recreating the atmosphere of walking through a bustling Malaysian pasar malam.

The result was staggering. The stream amassed 5.42 million views. By the end of the session, 51,700 products had been sold and total gross merchandise value (GMV) reached RM2.3 million (approximately SGD 736,000), officially becoming the highest livestream sales figure in TikTok Shop Malaysia’s history.

KA later posted on X: “Alhamdulillah kita pecah record baru hari ni. Sales tertinggi dalam sejarah livestream TikTokShop Malaysia dengan jualan 2.3 juta ringgit hari ni. Terima kasih semua.” Translated loosely, the message read: “Alhamdulillah, we broke a new record today. The highest sales in TikTok Shop Malaysia livestream history with RM2.3 million today. Thank you everyone.”

The achievement was more than a commercial milestone. It signalled a broader shift in Southeast Asia’s digital economy — where creators are no longer simply marketing products, but becoming fully integrated consumer ecosystems.

Rembayung: The Restaurant That Became a Cultural Event

Months before the record-breaking livestream, Khairul Aming had already triggered another phenomenon.

On 9 December 2025, he announced the launch of Rembayung, his first physical restaurant located in Kampung Baru, just minutes away from Kuala Lumpur’s iconic Petronas Twin Towers.

The project reportedly cost RM4 million (approximately SGD 1.28 million) to build, with more than RM500,000 (approximately SGD 160,000) invested into kitchen equipment alone. Constructed on an 8,000 square-foot site, the two-storey restaurant seats up to 250 diners and features a semi-glasshouse concept rooted in contemporary Malay aesthetics.

But the real story was the reaction. Within two hours of the restaurant’s Instagram page going live, it amassed 100,000 followers. Reservation demand became so overwhelming that the booking system reportedly crashed under more than 3,000 simultaneous reservation attempts.

Rembayung officially opened on 6 January 2026. KA described it as “the biggest investment” he had ever made for a single project — not merely financially, but emotionally. Even the name carried symbolism. “Rembayung,” referencing the warm hues of twilight skies, was intended to evoke hope, transition, and renewal.

Why Malaysians Treated a Restaurant Launch Like a National Victory

The frenzy surrounding Rembayung was not driven solely by food hype. It was powered by identity. According to analysis by media intelligence firm Dataxet Malaysia, public discussion surrounding the restaurant generated two massive engagement spikes. The first — roughly 2.8 million engagements between 9 and 10 December 2025 — emerged immediately after the restaurant announcement.

What stood out was the emotional tone of the conversation. The dominant terms were not “menu,” “price,” or “reservation.” Instead, words like bangga (“proud”), Melayu (“Malay”), and terbaik (“the best”) dominated online discourse. For many Malaysians, especially younger Malay audiences, Rembayung symbolised something larger than a restaurant opening: it represented a homegrown digital success story built without inherited privilege, institutional backing, or traditional celebrity machinery.

A second engagement spike — approximately 1.2 million interactions — arrived in early January 2026 as opening day approached. TikTok alone generated more than 5.56 million engagements related to the Rembayung narrative, outperforming Facebook and Instagram combined.
Remarkably, most of the momentum was organic.

No large-scale influencer amplification campaign. No traditional advertising blitz. No media saturation strategy. Just short-form video storytelling, accumulated trust, and a community emotionally invested in seeing one of their own succeed.

Even when the reservation website crashed, audiences reacted not with outrage but affection — joking online that KA should “take it slow. That level of public goodwill is almost impossible to manufacture through conventional marketing.

The Engineer Who Accidentally Built a Trust Economy

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Khairul Aming’s rise is what he refused to become. Before social media fame, KA earned a Mechanical Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University and worked in Malaysia’s oil and gas sector before later transitioning into logistics. He began uploading cooking videos in 2020, initially as simple, accessible recipe content.

Those videos evolved into “30 Hari 30 Resipi” — his now-iconic Ramadan cooking series that has become so influential that supermarkets in Malaysia reportedly experience temporary ingredient shortages whenever new episodes are released.

The accolades followed quickly. He was named TikTok Malaysia’s Content Creator of the Year in 2023. Shopee recognised him with Best New Seller and Best Customer Service awards in 2022. Industry insiders still reference the moment he reportedly generated RM1 million (approximately SGD 320,000) in TikTok Shop sales within just three minutes and 28 seconds.

Yet none of these milestones fully explain the phenomenon. What KA mastered was not virality. It was credibility. For years, audiences watched him remain unusually consistent in tone, presentation, and personality.

He did not cultivate unattainable luxury branding. He did not perform artificial exclusivity. He positioned himself as relatable — an anak muda Melayu who succeeded without abandoning the cultural identity his audience recognised as their own. That trust eventually became monetisable at an industrial scale.

What Khairul Aming Means for Southeast Asia’s Digital Future

The Khairul Aming story is not merely about one creator, one livestream, or one restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.

It is a glimpse into the future architecture of Southeast Asia’s digital economy. Across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, social commerce platforms are rapidly redefining how products are discovered, trusted, and purchased. Analysts expect Southeast Asia’s social commerce economy to expand dramatically over the next decade, with creators increasingly operating as vertically integrated businesses spanning entertainment, retail, hospitality, and lifestyle branding.

What makes Khairul Aming particularly significant is that he represents a distinctly Southeast Asian model of influence. Unlike many Western creator ecosystems built around hyper-consumption, controversy, or algorithmic spectacle, KA’s ascent was rooted in familiarity, consistency, and communal identity. His audience did not simply consume content; they emotionally participated in his growth.

Today, Rembayung has become one of Kuala Lumpur’s most talked-about dining destinations — a reservation-driven, 250-seat restaurant overlooking the city skyline while serving deeply rooted Malay kampung cuisine. But the larger significance lies beyond the dining room.

Khairul Aming’s rise suggests that the next generation of Southeast Asia’s most powerful brands may not emerge from corporate boardrooms or Silicon Valley accelerators. They may emerge instead from creators who spent years building relationships one video, one recipe, and one livestream at a time.

Because in the modern creator economy, the most valuable asset is no longer visibility. It is trust. For more stories exploring the intersection of culture, commerce, technology, and Southeast Asia’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, visit our homepage.

Sources:
[1] From Engineer to Rembayung Owner: This is Khairul Aming’s Journey to Successfully Record RM42 Million in Sales!
[2] CONTENT CREATOR & BUSINESS OWNER
[3] Khairul Aming sets new TikTok Shop Malaysia livestream record with RM2.3m in one day
[4] Khairul Aming Sells RM2.3mil in Products From Local Brands in 12-Hour TikTok Shop LIVE
[5] Khairul Aming Sells RM2.3m In Local Products During 12-Hour TikTok Shop LIVE At Rembayung
[6] Rembayung opens and Malaysia says ‘tambah nasi’ — Khairul Aming’s restaurant sells out in record time
[7] Delicious! Sambal Nyet creator Khairul Aming announces RM4m restaurant Rembayung in Kuala Lumpur, opening in Jan (VIDEO)
[8] How Khairul Aming’s Rembayung opening became a trust-led cultural moment
[9] From sambal to swank: Why a Malaysian food influencer’s upmarket move struck a nerve
[10] Khairul Aming Achieves Historic RM2.3 Million TikTok Shop Sales in Just One Day
[11] Rembayung opens and Malaysia says ‘tambah nasi’

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