The duo are Christy Ng Shoes founder Christina Mei Mei Ng, 29, and Touristly founder Aaron Sarma, 36.

They defeated 12 other hopefuls who today pitched their startups at the Malaysian Pitch@Palace event held here.

As a reward, they have been presented with the opportunity to pitch their online businesses at the 2016 edition of the UK-based Pitch@Palace event this December.

Present at the inaugural event this morning was the Duke of York Prince Andrew.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Ng said her passion for shoes developed at the young age of 4 and growing up in a less privileged family made her realise there was no room for failure.

“My father cleaned air-conditioners for a living and my mother was a housewife. So I knew I had to work extremely hard as failure was not an option.”

She is a biotechnology graduate and had worked at a pharmaceutical company before resigning to start her own online shoe store.

It gained traction worldwide for its unique feature that allowed customers to design their own shoes using 3D technology.

“I didn’t have any money to even rent a shop. So I went online and from there the business just bloomed. Now, we have customers from 40 different countries.”

Sarma, on the other hand, was struck with an idea to create Touristly, a website that made planning for a holiday so much simpler. It came to him while on a vacation with his family in Singapore.

“We realised it was quite difficult to plan the activities there. We had to go to different sites to book them.

“So we said: Let’s find a way to build a platform around this idea that you can create an itinerary you can book yourself.

“We try to make the process as simple as possible. So what would normally take travellers hours to do can be done in just a few minutes.”

AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes applauded the pitchers’ innovative ideas and said he himself saw the possibility of investing in some of the businesses presented at the event.