The Exabytes Group (‘Exabytes’), a leading web hosting services and eCommerce solutions provider in Malaysia announces today the launch of its ‘Cockroach Startup Program’ on 1 April 2017 as its first ever Technology-Funding program to help develop and grow a strong startup community across Malaysia.
Founder cum Executive Director of Exabytes, Chan Kee Siak shares, “A cockroach startup is the one which keeps struggling and moves forward in spite of changing environments, market conditions and investment scenarios, just like a cockroach.”
He adds that Exabytes’ motivation is to provide a platform that continues to see success in promoting high potential Malaysian startups in 2017.
“The introduction of the Cockroach Startup Program is part of Exabytes’ continual commitments in nurturing startups by providing a sustainable platform to help drive the setup of aspiring startups in Malaysia,” says Chan.
Malaysia is the 3rd largest market for startups. Grab, iflix and HappyFresh are just a few top Malaysian founded startup companies with great innovations and fascinating technologies that have established themselves in the South-East Asia region.
“The Malaysian government is always supportive of startups and tech innovation. There is also a passionate group of startup advocates comprising actual business owners or successful entrepreneurs, who are willing to help other entrepreneurs succeed by way of investment funding, providing mentorship and access to global network.
“To complement these startup advocates, we have designed Cockroach Startup Program to support pre-seed to seed high potential startup from all industry categories by way of technology funding to build and grow their business.”
What is in store in Cockroach Startup Program
This program will commence effectively on 1st April 2017 and Exabytes’ support comes in two (2) stages.
At Stage 1, the company will offer RM3,000 worth of credit for one thousand (1000) qualified startups who have joined incubator or accelerator program to use Exabytes services for one (1) year (including services such as Domains to Hosting, Servers and Online Marketing).
Stage 2 sees twenty (20) shortlisted startups which have successfully developed their products continue receiving Exabytes’ support worth RM30,000 in Credit for their production use. These twenty (20) startups will also be given RM20,000 in cash in exchange for Exabytes to gain 5% equity shareholding in their business.
“I truly believe that with our Cockroach Startup Program, local startups would be able to benefit from the right technology support to grow their businesses,” says Chan.
According to Chan, over the years, Malaysia’s startup ecosystem has seen more and more entrepreneurs with innovative products coming into the market. However, many startup founders in Malaysia lack insights on how to go beyond their borders to scale up their business including bringing their products to the global market.
Build & Realise the Startups’ Dream
Since the inception of Exabytes in 2001, Exabytes have helped many SMEs to grow their businesses by leveraging on their online platform services. Today, they are serving 75,000+ Customers (ranging from individuals, students, small and medium size businesses, to government and public listed companies) in 121 countries, apart from managing over 1000 servers with more than 100,000 websites, and over 1,000,000 email accounts.
“We see that there is a need to provide a platform to accelerate local startups which have a scaleable business model but they lack of insights on how to utilise the strategic technology to work for them to achieve maximum success.
Hence, with our initiative, we work with these aspiring startups while they can focus on validating their venture through mentorship and coaching in other areas or even the possibility of bringing their ventures to the global startups ecosystem,” explains Chan.
Besides being awarded as one of the BEST Domain Resellers by MYNIC (The Malaysia Network Information Centre) for many years, Exabytes was also handpicked by Google as a Google Premier Partner in 2015 to offer Google AdWords Online Advertising to SME in Malaysia to grow their businesses online by leveraging on the power of Google search and its effective online marketing tools.
