Greetings from Cradle!

I am pleased to introduce the Coach and Grow Programme (CGP) to you today. 

In the Malaysian 2011 Budget tabled last year, it was announced by the Prime Minister that Cradle would be tasked to lead a programme that would train existing entrepreneurs to grow their businesses to greater heights.

In our role as Programme Owners, we have spearheaded the formulation of the CGP, a market-driven programme intended to bring together key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to train existing entrepreneurs to grow their businesses to greater heights, via coaching, networking and showcase events. 

Since then, the Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia (TeAM) has come on board the CGP as the Project Manager, responsible for implementing the coaching, training and other capability development aspects of the CGP, while Proficeo Consultants SdnBhd (Proficeo) has joined us as the Programme Manager of the CGP for the purpose of implementation of coaching, training and appointment of coaches for the programme. 

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (MVCA) is a key supporting partner that serves as a member of the CGP’s Evaluation Panel and also participates as a Guest Coach, besides offering advisory, mentoring and guidance support to CGP participants. The CGP is also supported by Securities Commission. 

With the CGP, we aim to:

• Create a pipeline of high quality investable companies at various stages of growth for Funding Agencies, Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists (VCs).
• Increase the number of companies that “survive” the Pre-Seed and Seed stages of growth.
• Fortify companies that are born global or intending to penetrate export markets to scale and go global.
• Encourage companies to explore IPOs as a funding avenue for growth and expansion.

In general, the CGP will be targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs), a very important point to note, as the continuous growth of this group of businesses is crucial to the national economy as a whole. Malaysia’s close to 600,000 SMEs across all sectors comprise a whopping 92 percent of Malaysia’s business sector, and the Prime Minister himself has acknowledged that SMEs have consistently outperformed the overall economic growth since 2004, to average around 6.3 per cent compared with 4.5 per cent of average gross domestic product (GDP) expansion, adding that SMEs were actually the stabilisers of growth in our economy during economic shocks such as the recent financial crisis.

Indeed, SME contribution to Malaysia’s GDP is expected to increase from 31 per cent in 2010 to 40 per cent by 2020 as value added growth of SMEs continued to outpace the overall economy.

Thus the CGP is indeed timely, as Malaysia aims to grow our per capita income from US$7,000 to US$15,000 within the next ten years.

Currently, the general perception of smaller businesses in Malaysia is often one of failed promise. A study by the World Bank found the productivity level of SMEs in Malaysia low at RM44,300 per worker, which is merely a third of the output of large companies at RM143,000 per worker, besides also lagging behind other countries.

With the CGP, we aim to make a difference in a holistic manner, targeting entrepreneurial teams beginning from the idea stage right to the pre-IPO stage with customised programmes designed to delve into key challenges faced by entrepreneurs during each stage of growth. In this, we also target companies with the greatest potential of making it big, namely, those that are developing innovative technology or solutions with large business potential. 

Nevertheless, there will be those amongst you who will ask, how different will the CGP be, compared to other programmes past, present, and perhaps in the future. I am pleased to tell you that the CGP is not a purely theoretical training programme. It is a training and coaching programme designed to provide entrepreneurs such as yourselves with the tools and know-how to implement strategies and plans during commercialisation and growth stages. 

More importantly, to prove that we are serious in making the CGP a success, we are requiring participants of the CGP to be personnel of the founder level, C-level or senior management level who have decision making powers within the organisation. We don’t want our participants to have ideas that eventually die. We want our coaching to have an impact, thus our requirement for participants that would be able to implement the strategies discussed during the individualised coaching sessions. 

I hope that I have managed to whet your appetite for the CGP. I welcome you to challenge our recruiters with any questions you may have. I assure you, we believe in the CGP and we believe we can make a difference to your business. 

Thank you.

Nazrin Hassan
Chief Executive Officer
Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd