Malaysia unveils VC roadmap, but where is it going?

Dan Lain-Lain (Malay for “and others”) is a weekly column by TIA journalist Emmanuel Samarathisa that dissects the goings-on in the Malaysia tech scene, but with a heavy mix of current affairs, policy and politics. Click here to read past articles.

Malaysia Venture Capital Management (Mavcap), the largest government-owned VC firm in the country, launched a roadmap last week that aims to take the startup space forward.

The 11 so-called “interventions” in the Malaysia Venture Capital Roadmap 2024-2030 were grouped into three overarching strategies: boosting the ease of doing business, improving funding accessibility, and elevating the country’s VC talent pool. The agency is also proposing a six-year timeline to execute these strategies.

Kuala Lumpur’s central business district / Photo credit: Shutterstock

TL;DR of the breezy 33-page report:

• Seed new VCs
• Urge more government-linked investment companies (GLICs) to invest
• ⁠Get VCs to use a centralized platform to monitor the latest information
• ⁠Make cross-border flow easier

Other figures bandied in the report include doubling VC total funding value by 2030. Total VC funding in 2022 stood at US$758 million across a deal count of 165, according to the roadmap.

Before I critique the roadmap and list what we need to watch out for, let me note the positives.

The good

For starters: Yay, we have a roadmap! This may sound juvenile, but a roadmap is better than nothing. It gives an idea of what Mavcap intends for VCs and the startup scene.

Secondly, some of the points that the agency raised in the report match some of the grouses on the ground. For example, Mavcap mentions seeding younger fund managers. This has been a problem in the Malaysian VC space for yonks, as institutional investors or government-owned agencies would only select a handful of usuals to execute investments.

Mavcap also pushes for the use of a centralized system, but this isn’t new. Malaysian observers would have spotted this in the country’s Budget 2024 document. The fact that it’s being reiterated here means there’s continuity, and that policy is being executed as we speak.

Thirdly, it gives readers of the report and the community at large some benchmarks. The problem with Malaysia’s fractious startup space is that while everyone is doing something, they are all in silos and targeting the same pool of VCs. With a roadmap, there’s now some clarity as to functions and mandates.

The good part about all these is that Mavcap’s roadmap comes at a time when the government is actually serious about startups and tech. The government is organizing a tech conference on April 22, where it will also unveil another policy. I assume that Mavcap’s VC roadmap will fit under this bigger document.

The bad

Now, let’s discuss the problems. First, what Mavcap is saying in its roadmap is what it was supposed to have been doing since its inception 20 years ago. It was the country’s premier VC, the first among equals.

What to watch for