Budget 2022 reflects the need for technology and innovation in a post-pandemic Malaysia

DAILY life and the economy has evolved as a result of the pandemic with rapid digitisation of our lives - adoption of e-wallets, e-commerce being part of everyday life, and widespread adoption of software and technology in all organisations as a result of work-from-home arrangements.

Budget 2022’s commitment to innovation and the nurturing of startups will allow Malaysia to flourish under this new digital-first post-pandemic economy.

Startups can facilitate transformation

As our lives become more digital, startups will play a critical part in developing solutions that are relevant to the local market. Budget 2022’s allocation into both Technology Park Malaysia’s IR 4.0 Innovation Hub and Cradle’s MyStartup Strategy will help establish important locally developed innovations.

These innovations will likely range from consumer software and drone technology, to enterprise productivity tools and artificial intelligence technologies - playing an important part in our nation’s digital transformation. We are not only going to see new businesses emerge, but existing economic drivers, like the agricultural sector, transform with adoption of new technologies.

Cradle - RM20 Million allocation for MyStartup Strategy

ServisHero is an investee company of Cradle (being one of the portfolio companies of Cradle Seed Ventures (“CSV”), Cradle’s early-stage venture capital fund). With the early-stage capital from CSV ServisHero was able to develop and expand regionally our consumer app for home services, in later years, the support of Cradle allowed ServisHero to diversify the business to offer enterprise technology and blue-collar labour solutions under our WorkMagic.app unit.

Today, ServisHero operates one of Southeast Asia’s largest marketplaces for blue-collar workers and home services, with a presence in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Having experienced first-hand the positive impact Cradle’s support has had on our growth as a business, I was pleased to see RM20 Million allocated to support the MyStartup initiative, which Cradle will operate as the appointed coordinating agency of Malaysia's startup ecosystem.

In my view, it was important to solidify Cradle’s role as the central agency for startups, with appropriate funding. In the past, it has been difficult to navigate the various government agencies for startup support - Budget 2022’s allocation of RM 20 million for the MyStartup Strategy will ensure a simpler and centralised support structure for the startup ecosystem.

A critical part of the MyStartup strategy is the creation of a Hub that will facilitate cooperation amongst startups, as well as between startups and larger corporations and government agencies. No doubt, with this hub we are going to see greater chances of success and potential to run pilots and scale, for our locally-grown startups.

As a startup founder, I understand that these partnerships in the early stages of startup development are critical to a company's long-term success.

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* Karl Loo is the founder of ServisHero, a startup which operates the ServisHero home services app, as well as WorkMagic - an enterprise blue-collar worker platform.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.