Karamjit: My Fave 5 of 2014

Karamjit: My Fave 5 of 2014: Page 2 of 2

By Karamjit Singh January 5, 2015

Investing for world-class talent

Karamjit: My Fave 5 of 2014: Page 2 of 2 If there has been one consistent theme in many of the stories DNA ran in 2014, it has been on the urgent need for more good talent in the ecosystem. Companies don’t just want talent, they want good talent.

And while it used to be that it was exclusively the multinationals that want great talent, today, some of Malaysia’s leading tech companies are willing to compete for top-tier talent as well.

And this is where the Week in Review, my weekly column on what strikes me as the top tech news of the week, I wrote on June 27 stands out for me.

I was talking about how Ivan Teh (pic), a DNA Digerati50, had invested RM40 million (US$11.3 million) into creating a world-class work environment in his new corporate office in the hopes of being able to attract the best talent from around the world, especially Gen Y, to come and work for him and help build his big data and analytics firm, Fusionex International, into one of the top data companies in Asia.

I know of no other entrepreneur-led tech company based in Malaysia that has made this type of investment into its physical office and work environment in order to attract top-class talent and retain its key people.

Fusionex is listed on the United Kingdom’s AIM market and has a global customer base. Incidentally, congratulations are in order for Teh, who in December 2014, was the winner of Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Malaysia in the Technology Category.

The final story that made my Fave Five is when I wrote about DNA’s first print product, Digerati50. To only be produced once every two years, it is a significant product that serves to highlight some of the amazing entrepreneurs Malaysia has in its ecosystem and some of the policy-makers whom we felt deserved to be called out for the good work they are doing.

All were picked based on our belief that they would help shape Malaysia’s digital economy.

It was no surprise that the headline in my Founder’s Note read ‘50 To Be Inspired By,’ for surely all of them had inspiring stories to share.

With the next Digerati50 to be published in January 2016, work to pick the 2016 deserving entrepreneurs will start in the second half of this year.

And with DNA now operating in Singapore too, we need to decide if we are going to come up with a separate Digerati50 for Singapore or combine Malaysia and Singapore into one Digerati50. What do you think?