Capital Markets Malaysia launches first corporate venture capital programme to advance local ecosystems

• Builds on existing ecosystem to link players across private & public markets
• Partners MDEC to promote corporate venturing as innovation & growth strategy

Capital Markets Malaysia (CMM), an affiliate of the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), launched on 21st March, the nation’s first Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) Programme to advance the domestic venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) ecosystem by stimulating corporate investments by larger public listed companies (PLCs). 

Concurrently, this approach of spurring corporate interest and investments in startups or micro and small to medium enterprises (MSMEs) aims to build confidence in corporate venturing as a potential innovation strategy to catalyse growth.

The CVC programme is a leadership development programme featuring workshops to promote market development opportunities and capacity building. Each of these two-day workshops will be facilitated by industry leaders and features a high impact line-up of local and international market players from the VC, PE, digital and technology space. Topics covered include, ‘Innovation Readiness: 8 Innovation Key Drivers, Executing Corporate Venturing Strategy’, and the Malaysian VC Landscape.

CMM’s collaboration with Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) reinforces the significance of technology and digitalisation in spurring economic transformation and progress. This initiative will also see CMM working alongside relevant agencies and investment entities in Malaysia to bring together and connect verticals in a network that will improve access to capital, capacity building, as well as business leadership and development.

Dr Awang Adek Hussin (pic), Executive Chairman of SC, and Chairman of CMM said, “As our nation builds back stronger, our Capital Market Masterplan 3 (CMP3) paves the way towards a more sustainable and equitable economy. To facilitate wider population participation in the economy requires enabling infrastructures and networks, especially greater access to capital and funding avenues to facilitate capacity building for scale. The CVC programme builds on the existing ecosystem to connect different ecosystem players across private and public markets, from entrepreneurs, startups to the mature, large-cap PLCs.”

The objective is to transition Malaysia towards a greener economy, develop high tech industries, and at the same time, accelerate PLC growth by leveraging digitalisation and innovation.

CMM’s General Manager, Navina Balasingam added, “Our goal for CVC is two-fold: Firstly, to shape a more vibrant private marketplace by attracting corporate investments through the promotion, awareness and eventual familiarity with corporate venturing.” 

Meanwhile, the programme’s capacity building serves to empower PLCs in understanding when and how to leverage CV to fuel strategic growth. “There are many success stories of mutually beneficial outcomes where corporates are able to expand their product portfolios to capture new opportunities and scale their businesses, or monetise the investments for other strategic purposes,” Navina adds.

The collaborative efforts with MDEC will lay the foundation for a strong and robust pipeline of growth-focused businesses.  Ts. Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of MDEC, noted CMM’s multi-dimensional programme was well aligned to the new strategic initiative of Malaysia Digital (MD). 

“Networks, access, and connectivity, in every sense of the word, have and will continue to be the cornerstones of success for any business. We applaud the CMM’s efforts to catalyse entrepreneurship and the private investing ecosystem. This will have a large multiplier effect and complements MDEC’s efforts to drive investments, build local tech champions, catalyse the innovation ecosystem, and propagate digital inclusivity.”

“Our goal for the CVC programme is to promote awareness and familiarity with the corporate venturing strategy, the players and ecosystem. Familiarity will build confidence in navigating what seems to be a complex and opaque space,” said Navina.

Over the next two years CMM aims to collaborate with more strategic partners like MDEC to bring relevant and impactful workshops and networking roundtables to benefit the ecosystem and its players.

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