Episode #1: Accelerating Growth of Malaysian Startups 🚀🇲�‪�‬ The Bawatana Podcast

Sam Shafie and Kashminder Singh - more fondly known as Sam and Kash - are Co-Founders of Malaysia’s leading equity crowdfunding platform pitchIN. These gentlemen have been at the helm of democratising the investor space in Malaysia. Since its early days as a reward crowdfunding platform in 2012, pitchIN has and continues to make waves by holding some pretty cool accolades such as raising the most funds for certain projects as well as having the most number of backers for a single project. More admirably, we’ve been a fan of some of the more humanitarian efforts of their work including their successful execution of some groundbreaking crowdfunding projects including the first ever Indie festival in Penang called TAPAUfest, an on-demand movies Movie GoGo project, assisting flood victims in East Malaysia as part of MDEC’s social project and securing a permanent home for Wok It - a mobile kitchen that serves quick and customised meals to raise finances to build their kitchen.

As firm believers in the democratisation of fundraising and investing, they’ve enabled investors to invest in businesses they believe in and support the growth of some of the region’s most exciting startups including The Lorry, Oxwhite and Signature Market to name a few.

In this conversation, we talk about the entrepreneurial spirit of Malaysians, the 20% of companies that make it on pitchIN vs the 80% of companies that don’t, the foresight that Malaysia had over two decades ago and our progress to date, and the race to produce Malaysian unicorns.