Malaysian technology-based companies are growing from strength-to-strength with the help of experienced mentors and coaches from the Coach and Grow Programme (CGP).

The CGP is a public-private partnership between Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd (Cradle) and industry partner, Proficeo, and is designed to bring together key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to support and fortify technology entrepreneurs scale their businesses to greater heights.

The programme, which started in 2011, has helped 469 companies and 1,657 entrepreneurs to date. 103 companies completed the fourth Season of the programme which was concluded in October 2018. 64% of the companies participating in Season 4 are from the growth and global stages of growth while the remaining 36% were early-stage companies.

Proficeo co-founder and CEO Renuka Sena said, “Over the past 4 Seasons, we have coached technology companies from multiple industries and in Season 4, we also accepted brick and mortar companies who were looking at technology adoption strategies to grow their businesses.”

“What we have seen time and again is that individualised Coaching can assist founders from any stage of growth, industry verticals and now even brick and mortar SMEs, to build sustainable scalable businesses and go on to successfully raise funds for growth. We track the growth of companies using their revenue and other business metrics to help them scale and in doing so, the graduates from the CGP have collectively to date, generated RM2.034 Billion in revenue with many doubling their growth during and post Coaching.”

“Of this, RM275 million is Export Revenue generated by CGP companies who have collectively successfully penetrated 103 new export markets since joining the programme.”

She added that “In the CGP, the key performance indicator (KPI) used to track growth is revenue. This is because it is important for companies to grow their revenue to fuel growth internally. Whilst investments are not a KPI that we use to measure success, we do track investments raised by participants and to date, CGP participants have raised RM387.2 Million in Funds. This validates the CGP model because when companies can show that they are able to increase their revenues, private investors are more willing to provide funds for growth.”

Acting Group Chief Executive Officer of Cradle, Razif Abdul Aziz said the CGP was instrumental in helping good companies become great performers and regional and global players.

“Coaches involved in the CGP have done an incredible job of helping these companies find their niche and maximise their true potential. And this is only possible because all the CGP coaches are entrepreneurs, investors or senior management from corporate Malaysia who have experienced first hand, how to build companies from the ground up. It is this advice and guidance from experienced coaches that is invaluable at accelerating the growth of Malaysian companies,” he said.

Amongst some of the notable companies that have gone through the programme include SubHome Management Sdn Bhd, a hospitality company that manages luxury service suites in prominent locations. The company is redesigning the hotel experience, switching small, constricted rooms for spacious, comfortable suites at the same rates.

SubHome Co-Founder, Sandeep S. Grewal said, “There were many takeaways from the CGP program for an entrepreneur with over 12 years of starting and running my own businesses.

One of them was a segment where we drilled down to manage the finances of the company in such a manner where we are on top of the business and constantly driving it and not just reacting to the environment on a daily basis and firefighting every day. It was only after we did this, did we find clarity in our direction and it was easy for Investors to understand our business path.

Another take away was the amazing support and guidance from the coaches and the team. Business is a lonely path but with the experience and guidance we have gotten throughout CGP, we learned so much on market information that would have taken us years to learn on our own.

Last September, ECM Libra Financial Group Sdn Bhd and Tune Group Sdn Bhd via their joint venture Tune Plato Ventures Sdn Bhd have acquired a 50% stake in SubHome Management Sdn Bhd.

AppCable Sdn Bhd, another CGP company this season is the leading provider of a great payment source for the parking industry introduces JomParking as the on-demand and prepaid mobile payments for the street parking using smartphones.

Muhamad Nasir Habizar, Founder of JomParking said, “Prior joining CGP, although we had received funding, we faced a period of stagnant growth due to the fact that we hadn’t planned our marketing strategy well enough to acquire new users. However, during CGP program, the coaches taught us the best approach to manage both our product and consumers growth strategies. We are thankful for the guidance provided as we attained better plans for marketing and user acquisition. Therefore, we would highly recommend those who struggle with stagnation of growth to apply for CGP Program.”

Another promising participant is the company behind online platform, Signature Snack Sdn Bhd. Signature Snack makes healthy living accesible and affordable to all via its range of healthy snacks at wholesale prices.

Its Founder, Edwin Wang said, “During CGP, the coaches let us see a lot of possibilities beyond what we already had. There were many good strategies that may not be applicable immediately but what we learnt helped us build a 3-5 years plan with a clear idea of our growth possibilities.”

He also added, “We were also given a chance to be part of Investor Readiness Programme (IRP) where we secured two investors during demo day. Our coach was amazing as the advice led us to this success. I will definitely recommend IRP to all companies who wish to raise funds as it is very brilliantly designed to advance your knowledge about how VC works, what they’re looking for and how to pitch your story to raise funds.

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