Week in Review: Angel, accelerator, the coolness of coding

By Karamjit Singh July 12, 2013

Ecosystem gets a boost with a number of activities
Four championing ‘coding is cool’ cause

Week in Review: Angel, accelerator, the coolness of coding CAN coding become cool? It surely is important since it underpins the digital revolution we are living through now, and will get even more important when we enter the age of The Internet of Things or IOT.

Remember that acronym as you will be hearing more of it in future. It simply means that there will be a software-powered chip in every electrical, mechanical and even fabric product, all able to talk to each other.

Software code is what will enable this, but there is a shortage of coders around the world, with Malaysia being no exception.

Dhakshinamoorthy ‘Dash’ Balakrishnan, founder of D-Code, aims to do something about this.

Having just completed a coding event, D-Code Bootcamp, from July 5-7, which brought together 500 youth from ages 19 to 30, Dash is aiming for D-Code to be the vehicle through which Malaysian youth will learn about coding, while those who already know coding, will become better.

He has a similar programme going on in schools which is going nationwide. “I want to make coding cool,” is his ambitious goal.

Can he succeed? After all, Malaysians have shown themselves to not be keen on math, the foundation on which coding skills are built.

Dash at least is off to a great start with the Ministry of Finance and Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd supportive of his goal, allocating funding to ensure participants do not have to pay to attend.

Dash is just embarking on his journey to make coding cool, but he joins other entrepreneurs such as Hakim Albasrawy and Kal Joffres who, through Tandemic Sdn Bhd, have been running coding camps in Malaysia since 2011.

And of course there is Bikesh Lakhmichand who used to run hackhathons under iTrain from 2011 and now does it under 1337 Ventures Sdn Bhd.

If there is going to be a coding revolution in Malaysia, these are the people to credit as its spark.
Week in Review: Angel, accelerator, the coolness of coding
Speaking of sparks, D-Code Bootcamp was also used as the launchpad (pic) to count down the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) that will take place Oct 11-12 in Kuala Lumpur.

The Malaysian Government hopes to use the event to reinforce its support for entrepreneurs as the main engine for Malaysia’s growth.

And here’s a big shout-out to James Khoo, founder of SecQ.me who, after two years of sweat, toil and perseverance, has landed an angel investor with an RM100,000 (US$31,200) injection, and is about to land a promising telco deal too.

And if that isn’t a boost to our ecosystem, we now have an accelerator in Cyberjaya, BootstrapAccelerator, that will send the most promising startups that go through its one-year programme to Silicon Valley to turbo-boost their growth by plugging into the ecosystem there. That’s exciting!

What’s not exciting is the fact that ICT salaries in Malaysia trailed behind Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

What! We are not happy, are we? Unless of course you are an employer. Is this yet another incentive for you to take the plunge into entrepreneurism?

Previous Instalments:

Week in Review: Trust, security and standards, or lack thereof