Why the name
Topeng is the Malay word for mask. In the tradition it comes from, a mask is worn deliberately, by the person wearing it, for as long as they choose to. A child’s face online should work the same way.
The two of us
Bryan Liew
Co-founder and CEO
Five years at an outdoor education provider, from its first year, as Growth Manager. The provider runs 60+ residential and outdoor programmes a year for 2,500+ students across 25+ partner schools in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Bryan’s side of it was the schools: how they buy, who signs, and where a safeguarding decision actually gets made inside one.
Zero Ong
Co-founder and CTO
Zero founded JomStudy and built it into one of Malaysia’s most widely used student platforms, with over 600,000 downloads and a place on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2021. He has spent his career building tools teachers recommend and students actually open. Zero’s side of Topeng is the engine: the three protection methods, the C2PA signing, and the isolated backend photographs are processed inside.
What we believe
Every child deserves control over their own identity online, and a school should be able to publish a child’s proud moment without quietly gambling with their safety.
We significantly reduce the risk of a child’s photo being misused by AI. We don’t promise to eliminate it, because no honest tool can. We would rather be the company a school can defend to its parents and its board than the one that made the biggest claim.
Not everything runs on our own infrastructure either. Face Cloak and Face Blur run entirely inside our own isolated environment. Face Regeneration uses a third-party model, we name which one, and a school that would rather it did not can simply choose not to use it.
Two founders, one goal.