Under the aegis of the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC), the startup ecosystem in Malaysia has been steadily growing and maturing in the recent years.
Last year, Ashran Dato’ Ghazi, the CEO of MaGIC, shared some steps that should be taken to further advance entrepreneurship in Malaysia. One of them was to get big corporations involved.
Today, MaGIC launched two programmes: MaGIC CER Circle and MaGIC Activate, under the MaGIC Corporate Entrepreneurship Responsibility (CER) platform.
The CER is a national initiative to foster more corporate and private sector involvement in entrepreneurship development across Malaysia.
Some of MaGIC CER’s corporate and community partners include names like AIA, CIMB, Media Prima, Allianz, UNICEF, Microsoft, Sunway Ventures, TM, Techstars and United Nations among others.
The MaGIC CER Circle:
- Is a “membership” platform to connect corporates and startup communities
- Will enable said bodies to capitalise on disruptive technologies
- Will build a continuous innovation pipeline through partnerships
MaGIC Activate:
- Will help corporations running innovation challenges to reach out to more startups and entrepreneurs
- Is a platform for startups seeking to innovate for certain industries to find corporate partners and help them grow, scale and/or access new markets
- Eight innovation challenges have already been posted on MaGIC Activate
Entrepreneurs and SMEs form the backbone of our economy.
According to stats from MaGIC, 97% of the businesses established in Malaysia are SMEs.
They account for 65% of our nation’s employment, 36% of our GDP, and almost 18% of Malaysia’s exports.
Used wisely, entrepreneurship is a key to job creation and wealth generation.
And CER not only connects corporates with entrepreneurs, it facilitates innovation, helps corporates to weather and confront disruption on top of preparing economies for the future.
The collaborations also help the corporates to introduce more agility to their operations, disrupt existing business models, provide access to adjacent markets and adopt a more entrepreneurial mindset.
For the entrepreneurs, they gain access to the resources, mentoring, market opportunities and networks that the corporates have in hand.
CER also facilitates an environment where entrepreneurs can build viable, innovative solutions that address real business problems and fast-track the growth of their ideas.
Globally, corporations have been playing pivotal roles in supporting entrepreneurship by doing business with startups and providing mentorship to entrepreneurs.
Ashran gave an example of a telecom company in Jordan that created a CER division to boost entrepreneurship and help evolve the local and regional ecosystem.
The aspiring entrepreneurs in Malaysia need the support, and this is where the private sector can step in. Corporations also won’t lose out, and it’s clear that quite a few are already on board with this initiative.