Firms encouraged to enter Indonesian mart via MDec's platform.

Monday June 6, 2016

By Olivia Miwil

JAKARTA: Malaysia Digital Economy Corp (MDeC) Sdn Nhd is providing a platform for more Malaysian companies to penetrate the Indonesian market via its immersion programme. 

The immersion programme here, which started on Tuesday, is part of MDeC's globalisation strategy to get into the real market by understanding the ecosystem of Indonesia and meet with venture capital kejora and investors.  

Its Infotech vice-president Norhizam Abdul Kadir said the four-day trip, which was participated by 31 companies from Malaysia, was part of MDeC's role to boost technology use among small and medium companies, so that they could grow bigger by expanding business beyond Malaysia's market and to source for fund injection. 

Norhizham Abdul Kadir

"Indonesia's economy offers plentiful opportunities as  it contributes more than half of the Asian gross domestic product of USD2.6 trillion (RM10.79 trillion),", he said, adding that Indonesia also accounted half of the 622 million Asian population.

Norhizam said the establishment of foreign companies here would normally involve a long time, but through MDeC's intervention, Kejora would be able to help Malaysian companies to package their solutions that could hit the end users here. 

Overall, the immersion programme helps to globalise companies by achieving four pillars of growth, which are market access, technology disruption, funding ecosystem and capability development. 

On funding of companies, MDeC provides grant for product development and commercialisation as companies are encouraged to be more agile to grow independently. 

Meanwhile, for technology disruption, which helps businesses to sustain by evolving, it would need further boost as the current state of expenditure on research and development in Malaysia is still below par in the Asia-Pacific region. 

June 3, Friday (Online)

JAKARTA: National agency Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) inked a Memorandum of Understanding with Indonesian leading Venture Capital firm Kejora to facilitate business expansion for companies from both countries.

Its chief executive officer Datuk Yasmin Mahmood said Kejora was able to provide mentoring and guidance as it had deep understanding of Indonesia and digital innovation technology.

"The collaboration will see interested  Malaysian companies to come into Indonesian market through Kejora as soft landing zones.

"From there, companies can capitalise expertise offered by Kejora to make the market penetration easier, faster and more effective," she said, adding Indonesia had also recently declared on the opening up to foreign investment including technology sector.

In return, MDEC will also mutually do the same for Indonesia companies if they show interest in Malaysian market.

Both MDEC and KEJORA hope this agreement will expedite the development of start-ups in Indonesia.

Besides that, there were also document exchanges taking place between three technology companies from both countries to signify their intention for further collaboration.

The alliances are between PT Sigma Cipta Ceraka or Telkom Sigma and TriAset Sdn Bhd;  Jocom and Lojai.com; as well as IFCA Property365 Indonesia & PT. Sindeli Propertindo Abadi.