Jimmy How

Founder & CEO Involve Asia

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Jimmy How founded Involve Asia in Kuala Lumpur in 2014 to solve a problem that Southeast Asia’s fragmentation makes unusually hard: connecting brands to the creators, publishers and affiliates who can actually sell for them, across six markets with different currencies, payment rails and consumer behaviours. The platform automates the partnership management, campaign tracking and — critically — the centralised commission payouts that make the model work at regional scale, and it has grown to more than a million partners and over 500 active brands, having pushed more than RM15 billion in sales and paid out over RM1.2 billion in commissions. How came to it from payments rather than from advertising, having run operations at Mobile88, the company behind Malaysia’s iPay88 gateway, which is the more natural background for a business whose hardest problem is moving money to hundreds of thousands of small partners reliably.

Career Highlights

• Founder and chief executive of Involve Asia since 2014, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur with operations in Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
• Over a million partners and more than 500 active brands on the platform; more than RM15bn in sales driven and over RM1.2bn paid out in commissions.
• Raised over US$10m in a round announced on 22 February 2023, led by Bintang Capital Partners Berhad, with 500 Global, Orbit Capital Malaysia, Monumental Productions, Accord Ventures, OSK Technology Ventures and Cradle Seed Ventures participating.
• Grew the business at a 132% compound annual rate since inception while remaining profitable.
• Certified B Corporation; Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific honoree; holder of Malaysian MSC Status.
• Named to Tatler Asia’s Gen.T Leaders of Tomorrow list for Malaysia, 2024.
• Formerly chief operating officer of Mobile88 Sdn Bhd, operator of iPay88, then the largest payment gateway in Malaysia.

Professional Journey

How’s background is in payments infrastructure rather than in media. Before Involve Asia he was chief operating officer of Mobile88 Sdn Bhd, the company behind iPay88, at the time Malaysia’s largest payment gateway. Running operations for a payment gateway is a particular education in reconciliation, settlement and the unglamorous reliability problems that decide whether a marketplace works, and it is directly relevant to what he built next.

He founded Involve Asia in 2014. The affiliate marketing model was well established elsewhere, but Southeast Asia presented a structural obstacle: a brand wanting regional reach had to deal with six markets, six sets of payment arrangements and a long tail of small publishers and creators too numerous to contract with individually. Involve Asia’s answer was to sit in the middle as infrastructure — tracking campaign performance, automating partnership management, and consolidating commission payouts so that both sides dealt with one counterparty instead of hundreds.

The business grew without burning capital, which is unusual in its category. By early 2023 the company reported a 132% compound annual growth rate since inception, profitable operations, over a million partnerships and more than US$1.5 billion in sales driven since launch. That record is what attracted the February 2023 funding round of more than US$10 million, led by Bintang Capital Partners Berhad, the private equity arm of Affin Hwang Asset Management, alongside returning backers 500 Global, Orbit Capital Malaysia and Monumental Productions and others including Accord Ventures, OSK Technology Ventures and Cradle Seed Ventures. How said at the time that the money would go towards extending product lines and reaching new businesses and partners across the region; the company had close to fifty open roles.

Management had been strengthened ahead of that round. In May 2022 Rene Menezes, who had by then served on Involve Asia’s board for eight years and had previously led SimilarWeb’s Southeast Asia partner office and run CtrlShift, was appointed president to work alongside How on commercial development and stakeholder management. How remained founder and chief executive; he described being glad to have Menezes “in the trenches” as the company took on more aggressive growth targets.

Today Involve Asia runs from Kuala Lumpur with offices in Jakarta, Singapore, Manila, Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City. It has taken B Corporation certification, been named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for Asia Pacific, and holds Malaysian MSC Status. Tatler Asia named How to its Gen.T Leaders of Tomorrow list for Malaysia in 2024, citing his role in powering the social media economy, and the company has signalled intentions towards the Japanese and US markets.

Education

No education could be established for Jimmy How. Involve Asia’s own about page carries no leadership biographies, the Tatler Asia profile gives no educational background, and neither of the press reports read for this profile mentions any. This was searched for rather than assumed and remains an open question.