Digital hub shows govt support for startups, SMEs
KUALA LUMPUR: The announcement of the fourth digital hub in Malaysia yesterday marks the government’s further commitment in supporting the growth of startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country.
Malaysia Digital Economy Corp (MDEC) growth ecosystem development vice-president Norhizam Abdul Kadir said the government recognises digital hubs as a vital component to the growth of startups in Malaysia.
“Digital hubs are public-private partnership initiatives. When we announce a co-working space as a digital hub, we want to look at how we will be able to provide them with support in a form of incentives and how to enrich the ecosystem.
“These incentives can be in the form of tax breaks as well as facilitation of foreign knowledge workers to startups and SMEs.
“This is one of MDEC’s efforts to support the growth of digital economy in Malaysia,” he said at the launch of the Create@Alibaba Cloud Startup Contest Asean Division, here, yesterday.
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, together with MDEC, yesterday announced the establishment of a new digital hub at Worq co-working space in Glo Damansara.
It is the fourth digital hub approved by the government after APW, The Co and Common Ground — all located in Bangsar.
This is the first digital hub under the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) initiative, and marks an advance the realisation of the eWTP vision of empowering SMEs around the world and providing them with fair access to global markets.
The new digital hub will play a key role in incubating startups in Malaysia and across Asean countries, and accelerating the digital transformation of the region.
As the technology partner for the hub, Alibaba Cloud will roll out a series of programmes and services including the Alibaba Cloud Certified Professional certification programme, one-onone “go-to-cloud” consulting services and customised technology solutions designed by Alibaba Cloud architects.
These will allow small businesses to achieve scale rapidly and smoothly using Alibaba Cloud’s scalable and cost-effective cloud capabilities.
Alibaba Cloud Asean and ANZ head Raymond Ma said the company was committed to building up a unified ecosystem in Malaysia and the Asean region, making cloud computing more accessible to startups and SMEs.