While Malaysia’s startup ecosystem has shown a lot of promise and potential, it still lags behind in the region, particularly when compared to Singapore or Indonesia.

On the eve of the tabling of Budget 2023 2.0, we explore what the government can do to better support and stimulate Malaysia’s startup ecosystem to close the gap with regional peers. Helping us with this is Aaron Sarma, General Partner of startup accelerator and VC - ScaleUp Malaysia.

Among other things, we get into:

-Key government initiatives that have had a significant positive impact on the startup landscape

-How to address gaps in startup funding and talent needs

-The importance of creating greater market access

-Whether we need a “Buy Malaysian First” policy

-Why we need to get better at telling great stories about Malaysian startups globally

-The need to simplify the fragmented government support system focused on startups and SMEs.