The good, the bad, and the ugly of Malaysia’s VC roadmap

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Hello reader,

Could you get anywhere without the map on your phone these days?

I know I couldn’t navigate the labyrinthine streets of Hanoi without Google Maps and yet somehow when I first moved here, I managed it. Maybe I was just more content getting lost in my early 20s.

After all, you need to know where you’re going to move anywhere with purpose, and maps sure help with that.

Malaysia Venture Capital Management (Mavcap) recently unveiled a roadmap it hopes will move the country’s startup scene into the future. It’s an ambitious plan and one Malaysia seems in need of, given the country’s complex smorgasbord of government agencies involved with startups.

Today we look at:

• Where will Malaysia’s VC roadmap take the startup space?
• Tesla laying off 10% of its global workforce
• Other newsy highlights such as South Korean AI startup Upstage scoring US$72 million in funding and Apple planning more investments in Vietnam.

Premium summary

Malaysia’s map to startup heaven?

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Malaysia has a new plan to take its startup ecosystem forward.

Mavcap, the largest government-owned VC firm in the country, has launched a roadmap with 11 “interventions” for the startup space to take place over the next six years.

• High-level goals: The Malaysia Venture Capital Roadmap includes a target to double the total VC funding value by 2030. The figure in 2022 was US$758 million across 165 deals, per the roadmap. Seeding new VCs and launching a centralized platform for VCs are also part of the plan.
• Steps forward: The roadmap’s goals include solving well-known problems in Malaysia’s startup ecosystem. Among the interventions mentioned is seeding younger fund managers, as institutional investors or government-owned agencies tend to stay away from younger folks when it’s time to execute investments.
• Causes for concern: However, there are reasonable questions to be asked about Mavcap’s credentials. The firm was at one time the country’s premier VC, yet it has never raised a VC class nor invested in startups. In addition, it now reports to sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional, rather than directly to the government as it did in the past. How seriously the roadmap is taken will largely be down to the whims of Khazanah.

Read more: Malaysia unveils VC roadmap, but where is it going?

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