• Malaysian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association awards Sunway with Outstanding Property Development for Startups 2018

Sunway Group today bagged the “Outstanding Property Development for Startups 2018” at the Malaysian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (MVCA) Annual Dinner & Awards Night. 

The award recognises Sunway’s achievement in providing a complete innovation ecosystem for startups in its flagship city of Sunway City Kuala Lumpur within Sunway Innovation Labs (Sunway iLabs); a non-profit accelerator and incubator birthed from a collaboration between Sunway Ventures and Sunway University. 

This smart partnership connects state of the art built environment including infrastructure and amenities with access to mentors, markets, and funding – to foster entrepreneurship: combining “hardware” with “software” to help startups succeed. 

Sunway’s venture partner for digital ecosystem ST Chua and Sunway iLabs’ Director Matt van Leeuwen, received the award from Securities Commission Deputy Chief Executive Datuk Zainal Izlan Zainal Abidin and MVCA Chairman Victor Chua. 

“We are humbled by this award, which is testament to how we extracted value by synergising the strengths of Sunway’s Group’s business and academic units to foster entrepreneurship and to accelerate innovation. We will continue to strengthen the entrepreneurship ecosystem that will support a strong community of entrepreneurs and innovators that can drive the nation’s sustainable progress to being a high-income economy where no one is left behind,” said Matt van Leeuwen.

Sunway City Kuala Lumpur is Sunway Group’s award-winning smart sustainable township that integrates seven world-class components – education, healthcare, hospitality, retail, residential, commercial and leisure; an ideal physical sphere for innovation to happen. 

Sunway’s entrepreneurship ecosystem is built around “three M’s” or Money, Mentors, and Market access which is supported by Sunway iLabs; a non-profit accelerator and incubator under Sunway University; a corporate venture capital arm, Sunway Ventures and a venture capital fund, Sun SEA Capital. 

For funding, startups are able to pitch for capital across development stages from ideas, product development, commercialisation to growth from Sunway iLabs, Sunway Ventures and Sun SEA Capital as well as angel investors and venture capital groups which are part of the ecosystem’s network. 

For mentorship, startups can participate in entrepreneurship talks, structured programmes such as an accelerator, hackathons, and open innovation competitions centred around industry challenges and problem statements or receive mentorship from Sunway’s mentors and its network of seasoned external mentors. 

Most uniquely, Sunway Group provides an ideal testbed and launchpad for startups to get access to Sunway Group’s 12 business divisions along with a strong talent pool exceeding 60,000 university students in and around Sunway City Kuala Lumpur. Entrepreneurs can test their solutions within the City as well as gain access to Sunway University’s R&D labs to validate technologies, and conduct prototyping in the Sunway iLabs’ Makerspace. The ecosystem also acts as a launchpad for expansion to global partner hubs in the US, Europe and other parts of Asia. This includes innovation hotbeds around top academic institutions with which Sunway University has strong partnerships such as Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and University of California, Berkeley.