Dragon's Den to Uncover the Next Big Idea

As the national technology commercialisation platform, PlaTCOM Ventures was born as a joint effort between Agensi Inovasi Malaysia and SME Corporation Malaysia (AIM) with the goal of turning real ideas into products and services with commercial value. Its approach is very market-driven; with a model developed to facilitate along all the segments of the commercialisation process.

In its bid to discover new innovative ideas that can be commercialised, PlaTCOM will be holding a whole day closed-door pitching session called the Dragon’s Den at the upcoming Innovating Malaysia Conference 2014, which will be held on Aug 28 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the 16 individuals and companies selected to enter the Dragon’s Den as they will have an opportunity to pitch for funding from the PlaTCOM Angels Group – a club of High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), who are interested in investing in early stage technologies,” said Executive Director Dr Viraj Perera.

This is the first time that PlaTCOM is holding a closed-door pitching session. However, this is considered an expansion of the bidding and matchmaking activities for intellectual property rights that were previously run by the PlaTCOM team (prior to its launch) under AIM’s Innovation Business Opportunity (IBO) platform.

“There are many technologies residing in our universities, research institutes and companies where some of them might be the next “big thing” the world is awaiting. At PlaTCOM, we wish to narrow this gap by making those technologies reachable by potential investors who are constantly looking for new business opportunities,” said Dr Perera.

“This pitching session will offer both investors and innovators an 'interactive session' to share information at a deeper level and compliments the online platform whereby information can be shared, discussed and verified by investors in a relaxed and a conducive environment.”

In addition, PlaTCOM also links business opportunites to public funding agencies such as the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Malaysia Technology Development Corporation (MTDC) and Cradle.

PlaTCOM was launched in April by Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak and has since achieved several milestones. All of its services are up and running and companies, inventors and even the community have benefited from the services offered in terms of advisory and building business cases.

“Innovators are often lost in their quest to derive values from their ideas and inventions; PlaTCOM’s end-to-end facilitation model is proven effective in offering the specific assistance required, regardless at which step of the commercialisation value chain,” said Dr Perera.

“We are also close to completing our first international licensing deal. Information about this success will be announced soon,” he said.