Homegrown MSC companies hit RM10bil local sales in 2011

• Malaysian buyers show confidence in local tech capabilities
• MDeC considers likes of JobStreet, Macro Kiosk and MOL as MNCs

IT comes as a real pleasant surprise to us at Digital News Asia (DNA) that MSC Malaysia companies in the InfoTech Cluster that are Malaysian-owned chalked up an impressive RM8 billion (US$2.6 billion)  in local sales.
 
If you add in the MSC-Malaysia companies where Malaysians own a 50% stake, then the local sales figure goes up to a combined RM10.2 billion (US$3.3 billion).
 
This surely blows a hole in the long held belief that Malaysians do not support local innovation or software. The support and confidence is surely there, it may just not be to the level that Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) and its cadre of MSC companies would like it to be.
 
MDeC provided DNA with the following table (click to enlarge) after the Aug 15 unveiling of the InfoTech cluster’s stacking strategy as a means to enhance the market penetration of the companies.
 

While the data presented was good, one key financial analysis was missing. How well have our homegrown MSC Malaysia companies fared within this cluster? That has to be the real story of this cluster, we felt.
 
By way of background, the InfoTech cluster is the widest of the three MSC clusters with the gamut of software and hardware companies ranging from those in artificial intelligence to those in mobile financial solutions space. The other clusters are Creative Multimedia Cluster and Global Sourcing Cluster.
 
MDeC shared with DNA three groupings of its InfoTech cluster companies: Those where Malaysians were 50:50 owners, those where Malaysians were majority owners; and the companies that were foreign owned.
 
Now, foreign-owned can mean a multinational but also an SME (small and medium enterprise) and one other category that is an internal MDeC term, MSC Strong Performers or MSPs, which are basically strong performers from the SME pool.

But how are MSPs really different from SMEs?
 
MDeC explains that MSPs are strong performers taken out from the MSC Malaysia SME pool. They are made up of companies which meet a number of criteria such as having a minimum revenue of RM15 million (US$4.8 million) ) a year, a minimum R&D ratio of 5% out of total revenue, and with at least 30% of the staff being knowledge workers.
 
Meanwhile, MDeC shares that it also considers some homegrown companies as MNCs and offers JobStreet.com, Macro Kiosk Bhd and MOL Access Portal Bhd as examples. But what is puzzling here is that it does not give a breakdown of the export revenue of these homegrown tech MNCs.
 
But any questions readers have about the data presented here can be posed directly to Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, MDeC chief executive officer, who has been invited to speak at the kickoff to the monthly DNA-TeAM Disrupt series on Sept 19.
 
Make you reservations fast if you have not!
 
Related Stories:

MDeC’s Badlisham: ‘The best is yet to come’
 
MDeC employs ‘stacking’ approach to create greater value
 
How hungry is MDeC to make a difference?