Speaking at the Cyberview’s live panel discussion on ‘Financing the Future: Investing in Creating and Building Digital Business Models’, MDV’s Vice President (VP), Zuhry Rashid said fundraising for technology companies has been slow even with government funding last year.
Last year, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) had allocated RM100 million to Malaysia Debt Ventures Bhd (MDV) to fund the Technology Start-up Funding Relief Facility (TSFRF) to assist technology startups affected by the Covid-19 outbreak.
“Investors are having a knee jerk reaction due to the forecasts of the outbreak’s impact and because of that fundraisers are cautious in investing.
“However, the momentum picked up at the end of last year because of the recovery of the economy. In truth, Malaysian startups were already raising funds by that time which shows quite a growth in the ecosystem,” he added.
Referring to the survey conducted by the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) which highlighted that more than 20 percent of startups in Malaysia needed between RM251,000 to RM500,000 to ensure the sustainability of their business operations throughout last year, Zuhry explained that to ensure the sustainability of the businesses, especially startups, the government has provided other incentives to keep the sector competitively healthy.
Malaysia’s early stage startup influencer, Cradle Fund Sdn. Bhd. (Cradle) revealed two new investment programmes, the Cradle Investment Programme Ignite (CIP Ignite) and the Cradle Investment Programme Accelerate (CIP Accelerate) with higher fund limits in June, 2020.
The CIP Ignite is designed as a conditional grant of up to RM500,000 to help support early-stage technology based startups, SMES or spin-off companies from universities or research institutes.
On the other hand, the CIP Accelerate is a programme that provides funding of up to RM2 million focusing on accelerating the growth of deep tech companies and spin-offs from universities and research institutes.
