MaGIC‘s third cohort of social entrepreneurs showcase ideas during Demo Day

• 22 social entrepreneurs participated in the four-month programme.
• Previous MaGIC SE Accelerator cohorts have gone on to raise RM1.5 million in impact investment

THE Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC) concluded the latest round of its Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator Programme, celebrating the third cohort’s successful completion of the programme with a Social Entrepreneurship (SE) Demo Day.

At the Demo Day, 22 social enterprises from Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Penang, Sabah, and Putrajaya presented to a room of venture philanthropists and impact investors. 

Each social entrepreneur also received MYR30,000 of seed funding to support a pilot of their ideas, monthly stipend, accommodation, as well as working space.

During MaGIC’s SE Accelerator Programme, social entrepreneurs had the opportunity to learn from a pool of 25 mentors: investors, corporates, government agencies, and fellow social entrepreneurs.

These individuals included Google head of technology Prashant Pathmanaban, Unicef Innovation lead Chelsey Lepage, Biji-Biji co-founder/CEO Rashvin Pal Singh, and TOMS Shoes managing director Fahmi Zawai.  The programme’s partners included Grab, Petrosains, Maxis and LaundryOnThe Go.

MaGIC Social Entrepreneurship executive director Ehon Chan (pic, above), said: “I would like to congratulate the 22 social enterprises that took part in today’s Demo Day for successfully completing our third SE Accelerator Programme. Over the past four months these social entrepreneurs have been through an intense experience and I’ve been inspired by their commitment to tackle some of Malaysia’s most crucial social and environmental issues. This is just the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey for many and we are excited by what the future has in store for each of you!

“We continue to see strong, and growing, interest in social entrepreneurship from partners and investors alike and would like to sincerely thank all of our partners and mentors who have generously invested time, energy and for some, money, in these social enterprises over the past several months.”

SE Track’s third cohort strived to solve social issues in the following sectors: community development through arts, fashion, as well as food and beverages (48%), healthcare and sanitation (9%), education (26%), environment resource management (13%) and agriculture (4%).

Participating social enterprises are divided to four key stages of ventures: 22% belong to the ideation / prototyping stage, 26% to the pilot stage where they’re still validating ideas, 52% to the pre-seed funding stage and 26% to the operational stage where they are consistently generating revenue.

Among the most innovative social enterprises that presented at the Demo Day were:

• Grow the Goose that teaches children financial dependency;
• 1L Car Wash that offers convenient, affordable, eco-friendly and socially-conscious solution to washing cars;
• CarinMED with their electronic medical record application for volunteer doctors in mobile clinics to access and manage medical history of their patients in marginalised communities;
• Music & Me that offers a user friendly story telling kit that empowers parents with a home-based teaching tool to equip their handicapped children with critical communication and social skills.

MaGIC CEO Ashran Ghazi said that, “We’re pleased to see the SE Accelerator Programme continue to unleash the potential of social enterprise for the greater good of communities across Malaysia. This cohort has been inspirational, and I hope they will be successful in solving the causes they identified with. This will help us to cultivate our nation’s community of social entrepreneurs and propel our nation to become a regional leader for people economy”.

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MaGIC pushes social entrepreneurship forward through SEHATI

Cohort 3 of MaGIC Accelerator Programme kicks off

MaGIC, Uber, Digi launch Asean ideation lab

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