New initiatives for Malaysian startups: Q&A with MaGIC CEO Ashran Ghazi

Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) CEO Ashran Ghazi attended the recent Geeks on a Beach conference in Panglao, Philippines and Tech in Asia caught up with him for a rare one-on-one interview. In it, Ashran shares what it’s been like being at the helm of the government agency and what he has in store for Malaysian startups.

Tech in Asia: Ever since you took charge as the new CEO of MaGIC, what has been the biggest change?

Ashran Ghazi: What we’re doing right now is slightly tweaking the narrative for MaGIC – you know our name stands for Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Center. There’s been a slightly stronger push as I stepped in to expand beyond tech per se – not that we were not doing that before but I guess from a public perception, it was seen as tech.

Whereas how we were doing things before was, it was tech as an enabler and there were all these other verticals running. To enhance that communication out to the public, we’re tweaking the narrative to say that MaGIC is actually a creativity innovation center for entrepreneurs.

By virtue of that, I’m also trying to dilute the whole conversation about tech and non-tech – I don’t care whether it’s tech or non-tech. All we care about is whether there’s innovation value to it or not. I think the minute we do that, we’re well-poised to basically handle all types of startups and help them. Our cry call right now is we help companies value-innovate.

What is value-innovate? All that means is that companies – regardless of what stage – get the highest yield, in the shortest time possible, with the least amount of investment possible. And if we’re able to help companies do that, they should be able to come up with a more viable, sustainable business.

What are you doing to double down on Malaysian startups that have already done well?

To the guys that are doing well, it’s for us to keep in touch and try to come in at the right intervention points. There’s different tiers of “well”.

There’s the “really well” that probably means they’re pretty much on their own already and they don’t require much support. There’s “well” that’s on the tipping point stage. They’ve got some decent funding but need to make sure they’re in the right footing to be able to move on to the next level. So for those kinds of companies, that’s where we try to activate government support systems to make sure they’re a bit more poised to move forward.

At the early stage is where we try to be more private sector-driven. That’s where the whole idea of Creativity Innovation Labs comes in. I believe, in general, private sector guys are better at trying to identify good ventures […]

We should be working with private sector guys who really know what the demands are and then we support that initiative as opposed to us hypothesizing, “we think this is good, let’s place our bets on that.” The whole movement forward is to ensure that there’s a bit more of corporate involvement in the startup scene.

When you said ‘activate government systems,’ what did you mean?

If we identify high-potential companies that have achieved proven track record, then we will figure out ways from existing programs in the government – look at what else they can leverage. It could be beyond MaGIC; in Malaysia, there’s so many entrepreneurship initiatives and entrepreneurs also tend to be confused which programs are for what.