Malaysia has experienced many exciting milestones in the past few years. On the 27^th of April 2014, the government launched Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC) and was officiated by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Mohd Najib Abdul Razak. MaGIC (www.mymagic.my) to enables and supports the sustainable growth of entrepreneurship in Malaysia. Their goal is to drive sustainable ecosystem development through innovation, as well as create value and new economic drivers for Malaysia. They help entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey by collaborating with other government agencies, industries, and community stakeholders. To build upon nation’s creativity and innovation skills as well as grow talent, they offer dynamic programs and capacity-building initiatives. MaGIC is also working to position Malaysia as a gateway to Asia for entrepreneurs to expand their business and reach. Social entrepreneurship is a key focus for them; they aim to drive the movement forward through community engagement, capability development, and social impact measurement initiatives. In 2015 they launched the Malaysian Social Enterprise Blueprint which is a three-year roadmap that aims to develop the Malaysian social enterprise sector to be self-sustainable, equitable and people centric in order to empower impact driven entrepreneurs.

MaGIC also will host the Global Entrepreneurship Community Summit 2017 (www.gecommunity.co) on 5 & 6 December 2017 to bring forth ecosystem influencers, startup communities and industry leaders from across the globe to collaborate and find new innovative approaches to solve real problems and chart the way forward for entrepreneurs. This year summit will be a convening ground for change makers to participate in 100 GEC labs across 15 themes set around an un-conference format, listen to over 20 stimulating keynotes and panel discussions, receive mentoring from notable entrepreneurs, participate in over 10 entrepreneurship Masterclasses, and visit over 200 exhibition booths aside from partaking in the Malaysian Business Angel Network (MBAN) Summit, video competitions and the Entrepreneurial Higher Education Symposium.

In June 2015, the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) approved six equity crowdfunding (ECF) operators, opening an alternative funding platform for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Malaysia has also become the first country in Asia-Pacific to legislate ECF. The ECF framework is an important milestone for inclusivity in the Malaysian capital market. Over the years, Malaysia has developed a diversified and well established MYR2.8 trillion capital market, helping businesses to grow as well as financing long-term investments in the economy. In addition, the fintech industry is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years and change the way financial services are provided around the world. Thanks to the provision of a wide range of products that are easy to access, industry experts estimate that fintech will slowly edge out traditional financial institutions like banks.

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) is a leading university in commercialization of Intellectual Properties in Malaysia. InnoHub is UPM’s first innovation lab targeted at nurturing technopreneurs who work on translating technologies and innovations into market viable products by developing the best go to market plan from market validation exercise. Currently, 36 startups companies were established in various fields including Agriculture, Biotechnology, Food, Technology, Computer Science, ICT/Aps, Medicine and Health, Engineering, Social Sciences and Education.

Introduction of particular startups 

BorderPass is an opt in service that gets users through airport immigration in seconds. A digital passport is sent to the destination government ahead of travel, and pre-cleared users get to skip the immigration queue using a BorderPass automated gate. Their 5-year goal is to cover all major ASEAN airports and build a presence where possible in Asia Pacific. They want users to experience expedited immigration checks at multiple countries and airports with a single enrolment. They have been recognized as Amadeus’ Startup of the Year 2016 and won 1^st Prize at the Asian Entrepreneurship Award in Tokyo, Japan. In 2017 they were awarded a Special Innovation Prize by Mekong Innovative Startup Tourism, an accelerator backed by the Asian Development Bank and Australian Aid.

Soft Space (www.softspace.com.my) is a leading fintech player in the ASEAN region headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Their products have been shipped to most major ASEAN countries with populations of 625 million and deployed 180k of payment terminals to enable countries to go cash-less. They are one of the major MPOS providers in the region and they aim to transform the banking and payment industry. Soft Space is currently gravitating towards expanding into omnichannel payments which includes the adoption of artificial intelligence. Soft Space is also the first company in Asia to obtain a centralized EMV Level 2 certification for cloud-based server, and their solutions are certified by EMV, PCI and major card schemes; making it secure, credible and recognized globally. Soft Space benefited from the growing investments of fintech in SEA, especially interest from Japanese conglomerates. In May 2017, Soft Space receives a strategic investment of USD$5M from transcomos inc. after securing a partnership with Sumitomo Mitsui Credit Card (a subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group) and Yamato Transport.

YouthsToday (www.youthstoday.com) was founded in April 2013 as a marketing platform to help event organizers reach a mass audience. With over 50,000 youth members servicing over 100 Colleges, Corporate Brands, Media, & Government Leaders in Malaysia, YouthsToday.com packages everything an event organizer needs into a single website. Powered by sponsorship matching, registration, tracking & reward systems, they have close to 30 brands on board now (both corporate and SMEs) supporting all the student activities across Malaysia. YouthsToday.com is aiming to be the one stop solution for youth when it comes to activities and building funds to help them in their youth projects. It also aim to be a community of youth around the world that focuses on leadership, environment, self-development, community and a place that they can fall back to when they needed help.

Trunk Busters (www.trunkbusters.com.my) is a biomass processing company which specializes in Oil Palm Trunks (OPT). In Malaysia, millions of tons of agriculture material were produced every year, but simply being chopped into pieces and left to decompose.  Each decomposing ton generates about 0.5 ton of CO2 which will make our current global warming situation even worse. Therefore, Trunk Busters have developed, patented and field tested a machine which pulverizes a felled OPT within 2 minutes.  Mr. Chandrasekhar Arun started researching a solution and built a prototype machine and in 2013, one of the suppliers, Mr. Tomohiro Kamochi decided to invest so that the prototype machine can be upgraded to be the first commercial model of the Trunkbuster pulverizer machine. Patents have been granted for the unique nature of this machine’s design which allows it to efficiently break down an OPT into fibres averaging 1 inch in length. Pulverized OPT can be converted into a variety of downstream products: fertilizer, wood products, bioenergy, pellets, biofuels, bio based chemicals and others. In 2015, the second round of investment led to the setting up of a full scale OPT processing plant.  The most cost effective way to produce fuel pellets from OPT was uncovered and opened up opportunity to provide biofuel pellets to Japan via Trunk Busters Japan Inc.

Author:
Dr. AHMED RAZMAN Abdul Latiff is the Manager of Entrepreneurship, Community Development & Impact of Putra Business School (PBS). He is a member of the Intellectual Properties Evaluation Panel for Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), which involves in identifying the potential commercialization of UPM inventions. He is currently in the board of directors of a startup specializing in technological products. Since 2012, he is one of the Nominating Committee Member representing Malaysia for the Asian Entrepreneurship Award based in Japan. He can be contacted at razman@putrabs.edu.my