Malaysian-Chinese content creator Lim Siow Wei — known globally as im_siowei — was named to the 2025 edition of the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list, placing her among a regional cohort of young founders, entertainers, technologists, and entrepreneurs recognized for shaping the future of Asia’s business and media landscape.
The Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list has become one of the most internationally recognized lists for emerging entrepreneurs and public figures under the age of 30. Each year, the publication evaluates thousands of candidates across categories ranging from finance and healthcare to entertainment, retail, and social media. Inclusion in the list signals not just audience popularity but broader influence, commercial momentum, and long-term industry impact.
For im_siowei, the recognition marked a significant milestone in a career that began only five years earlier during the COVID-19 pandemic. A graduate of the Australian National University with a Master’s degree in Financial Management, she originally expected to enter the banking industry after returning to Malaysia. Instead, after pandemic-era disruptions reshaped the job market, she began experimenting with short-form content on TikTok in April 2020 — a decision that would eventually transform her into one of Southeast Asia’s most-watched creators.
By the time Forbes Asia announced its 2025 list, im_siowei’s digital footprint had already reached an extraordinary scale. Her YouTube channel had crossed into the multi-million subscriber range with billions of cumulative views, while her TikTok account consistently ranked among the strongest-performing creator accounts in Malaysia by average views per upload. Her audience had also become heavily international rather than purely domestic, with viewers spanning Southeast Asia, North America, the Middle East, and Europe.
The Forbes recognition reflected more than raw metrics. What distinguished im_siowei from many creators in the short-form category was the increasingly business-oriented structure surrounding her content ecosystem. The YAEY universe — built around recurring school-life characters such as Richy, Smarty, Besty, and the iconic Siowei Mom — had evolved beyond standalone videos into a recognizable intellectual property ecosystem extending across multiple platforms and formats.
That expansion included soundtrack releases on Spotify, large-scale long-form productions such as the YAEY School Musical, merchandise initiatives, brand collaborations, and eventually the Roblox experience “Escape the Momster,” developed together with global Roblox studio The Gang. Her ventures also extended into consumer products, including involvement with the skincare brand Just For Teens, distributed through thousands of Dollar General stores in the United States.
The Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 recognition also reflected the broader evolution of the creator economy itself. In previous decades, digital creators were often viewed primarily as entertainers or influencers. Increasingly, however, creators with large and durable audiences are being recognized as operators building scalable media businesses with intellectual property value, merchandising potential, and cross-platform monetization structures. Im_siowei’s inclusion in the list aligned with this shift.
For Malaysia’s creator ecosystem, the recognition carried symbolic weight as well. Southeast Asian creators have historically struggled to receive institutional acknowledgment at the same level as North American or European creators, despite commanding audiences of comparable scale. Im_siowei’s placement on the Forbes Asia list signaled that creators emerging from Malaysia and the wider Southeast Asian region were increasingly being viewed as globally competitive digital entrepreneurs rather than regional internet personalities.
The recognition would later be reinforced by a series of additional international milestones, including her appearance at the UAE Government’s 1 Billion Followers Summit and her 2026 Webby Awards recognition in the Individual Creator (Kids & Family) category.
For audiences who had followed her journey from early TikTok skincare videos during lockdown periods to one of the largest creator ecosystems in Malaysia, the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 recognition represented more than a personal milestone. It represented the formal acknowledgment that a creator who began posting videos from home during a global pandemic had become part of a new generation of Southeast Asian media builders operating on the international stage.
