Malaysia’s public service retirement fund Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP) on Thursday launched an 500-million ringgit ($106.68 million) vehicle to invest in startups and venture capital funds over the next 18-24 months.
The aim of the early-stage Dana Perintis fund is to spur the nation’s venture capital (VC) and startup ecosystem.
The fund will allocate RM250 million, or 50% of the corpus, for direct investments into startups. The remaining part of the corpus will be put into a fund-of-funds to invest in venture capital funds.
KWAP is seeking to select 10 VCs in total, from the 38 proposals received earlier this year, for the Dana Perintis fund-of-funds.
“The goal of Dana Perintis is two-fold, to enhance the Malaysian early-stage ecosystem, and to generate attractive and sustainable risk-adjusted returns for KWAP and our stakeholders,” said KWAP chief investment officer Hazman Hilmi Sallahuddin during the fund launch.
“KWAP believes that the Malaysian venture capital and startup ecosystem is at a positive inflection point. Dana Perintis is aimed to be a bolt-on initiative to complement the efforts by other GLICs [government-linked investment companies] and government agencies, optimising synergy in the push towards a common goal, in line with the Ekonomi Madani framework,” he said.