How to thrive in the age of constant digital disruption and how can young startups forge their own path?

Answers to these questions and more were found at the much anticipated Malaysia Rice Bowl Startup Awards 2018 that was held at the Oasis Discovery Centre in Ara Damansara, Selangor.

Organised by the New Entrepreneurs Foundation Malaysia (myNEF) and now into its fourth year, the Malaysia Rice Bowl Startup Awards is the platform for recognising young startups disrupting old processes and industries.

A brainchild of myNEF, the awards recognise breakout startups in the country that harness digital technology, and celebrate rising tech entrepreneurs in various categories of excellence ranging from retail, media, digital, tech, products, services and innovative campaigns to women and social enterprises.

myNEF believes businesses can grow fast and be sustainable when they harness technology and knowledge.

It plays a significant role in bridging industry players and the government, working closely with
various agencies and government-related organisations to support existing and upcoming entrepreneur development programmes.

The Malaysia Rice Bowl Startup Awards and ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards are among myNEF’s signature programmes.

The Rice Bowl Award (Rice Bowl) is beneficial to both the Malaysian startup and ASEAN startup ecosystems as it connects and empowers the ASEAN Economic Community to power up their local economies with startups and scaleups.

“I am extremely happy to hear that Malaysian Startups are accelerating faster than ever, and we hope that they become a significant contributor to our nation’s GDP and growth, and also become a significant type of business that employs and cultivate cutting edge talent and become a key source of employment,” said Minister of Communications and Multimedia, Gobind Singh Deo.

Rice Bowl recognises innovation, excellence and best practice in startups and ecosystem players across ASEAN, as well as celebrates the ASEAN community’s spirit of diversity in entrepreneurship to solve local rice bowl issues that are replicable across the region.

It also recognises the excitement, risk and hard work involved in developing a startup and the influence each person has on driving the success of their company.

myNEF believes that by celebrating startups, together they can solve the diverse local rice bowl issues faced by each country across Southeast Asia, this will ultimately benefit Malaysia and subsequently ASEAN as a region.

“With over 50 nominations for Founder of the Year, and over 70 nominations for Startup of the Year at this year’s Rice Bowl Startup Awards, I think Malaysia’s Tech Startup Ecosystem has matured rapidly in the past 3 years.

“It is a testament to the developmental investments and programmes by the Malaysian government, private sector support and independent initiatives.

“For a modest market size, we should be on track to produce Malaysian-based ‘Unicorns’ within the next few years,” said myNEF chief executive officer, Lilyana Abdul Latiff.

The categories of the Malaysia Rice Bowl Startup Awards 2018 are Star Awards (Startup of the Year, Founder of the Year, Best Newcomer, People’s Choice); and Industry Awards (Best
Fintech, Best Health/Med Tech, Best Food & Agri Tech, Best e-Commerce, Best Logistics & Supply Chain, Best Business Automation Tool, Best Life Helper).

The other categories are Ecosystems Awards (Investor of the Year, Best Accelerator/Incubator Programme, Best Ecosystem Initiative, Best Co-working Space); and Cross Sector Awards (Best Digital Marketing, Best AI/Machine Learning, Best IoT).

National award winners will proceed to compete at the regional ASEAN Rice Bowl Startups Awards 2018 to be held in Bali, Indonesia, in December, which highlights model entrepreneurship and inspires a dynamic community of startup enthusiasts, serial entrepreneurs, policymakers and diverse mentors in tech innovation.

Regional winners at the four-day ASEAN finale will benefit from partnership opportunities, media exposure, regional and global networking as well as funding from investors.

The Rice Bowl Community consists of 3,372 alumni from 10 ASEAN countries and connects
with the Global Startup Awards, not to mention, the Rice Bowl has a total of US$108.4 million pledged investments from 2015 to 2017 as well as over 17,000 social media followers and five million media reach.

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