The problems plaguing Malaysia’s largest VC

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Hello reader,

I’m an avid gamer, and one of the things I love doing is watching esports tournaments. About a decade ago, I would regularly watch the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), a professional league run by Riot Games in North America and Europe.

I enjoyed the game, the matches were exciting, and the narratives of player and team rivalries kept me engaged week after week. Even though I eventually stopped playing the game to keep my mental health intact (you’d understand if you played League of Legends before), I was still interested in watching professional games.

Somewhere along the way, however, the LCS lost its appeal. Top players started leaving or retiring, matchups got stale, and storylines seemed to fizzle out. I lost interest in the league and stopped watching altogether. In today’s story, we take a look at a similar situation for Malaysia’s largest VC firm, which appears to have stepped on slightly shakier ground in recent years.

Today we look at:

• Whether Malaysia’s largest VC firm is still at the top of its game.
• A fresh series C+ funding win for KKday
• Other newsy highlights such as Razer taking Capgemini to court and a new social media platform from a former Grab director.

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Has Mavcap reached its cap?

Image credit: Timmy Loen

I like to think of it as a cycle: The biggest and best always get inevitably replaced by younger, hungrier faces as time passes. Whether this is what Malaysia Venture Capital Management (Mavcap) will face in the near future is unclear.

• The old guard: Mavcap was founded in 2001, with a mission to invest in ICT-related companies across the entire funding spectrum, from pre-seed to late stage. It currently has a total portfolio value of about 5 billion ringgit (US$1.3 billion) but has stopped direct investments since 2011 to focus on being a fund of funds.
• Big concerns for a big VC: Investment professionals Tech In Asia spoke to cited four major issues plaguing Mavcap. The first is that it’s difficult to directly engage the VC firm with proposals, and the second is that its funding has become too small to make meaningful investments. Apart from that, newer agencies that fulfill the same mandate have cropped up, and government entities such as Mavcap may be adapting a wait-and-see approach due to the upcoming general election.
• Copycats: Mavcap has to contend with several other entities that play similar roles. According to Securities Commission Malaysia, 45% of capital in the country’s VC space came from government agencies and investment companies. With the government budget spread thin, Mavcap found its annual budget halved under the 11th Malaysia Plan and was not part of this year’s government budget allocation.

Read more: Has Malaysia’s largest VC lost its luster?

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