KUALA LUMPUR (March 16): Khazanah Nasional Bhd on Thursday (March 16) launched the Future Malaysia Programme, which aims to support the local start-up ecosystem of entrepreneurs, start-ups, venture capital and corporate venture programmes through collaborations with domestic and international partners.
The programme is an initiative under its Dana Impak mandate — a RM6 billion commitment over five years and a key pillar under Khazanah’s Advancing Malaysia strategy, seeking to invest across six themes based on issues and challenges facing the nation.
Among the issues highlighted are digital society and technology, quality health and education for all, decent work and social mobility, food and energy security, building climate resilience and competing in global markets.
“We begin with the start-up ecosystem, which is an essential source of entrepreneurship, employment, innovation and investment for the nation.
“Many potential solutions to the challenges we have identified under the Dana Impak themes are found in early-stage companies, which requires injection of risk capital at different stages of the venture, to scale innovation and business,” said Khazanah’s managing director Datuk Amirul Feisal Wan Zahir in a statement.
The programme aims to drive strategic corporate collaborations within Malaysia’s venture capital ecosystem to foster sharing of ideas and enhance business value in a more holistic way.
“The Future Malaysia Programme also aims to deploy an initial amount of approximately RM180 million by working with established local and international venture capital managers as well as corporate venture programmes based in Malaysia,” it said.
On a separate matter, the country’s strategic investment arm also announced its partnership with venture capital funds, namely Gobi Partners and 500 Global.
“Both are among the most active venture capital managers with an extensive investing track record and expertise for value creation in Malaysia.
“Their international footprint and network acts as a bridge to crowd-in regional venture funds to invest in Malaysian companies, and for Malaysian start-ups to expand internationally, with the anticipation of becoming regional champions,” it said.
Meanwhile, Khazanah also partners with Plug and Play, a leading global innovation platform that connects start-ups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities and government agencies.
“The focus of the partnership is to set up a Malaysia-based corporate innovation and accelerator programme involving leading Malaysian corporates. CelcomDigi Bhd, a key associate of Axiata Group Bhd and one of Khazanah’s portfolio companies, has signed up as an anchor partner of the programme and will be driving the initiative via CelcomDigi's Innovation Centre,” it added.
Previously, Khazanah is a corporate partner for Petronas' FutureTech 3.0 technology accelerator programme, which aligned with its purpose to foster collaboration between corporates and the tech-driven start-up ecosystem by unlocking synergies and enhancing business value by leveraging cross-industries expertise.