Fortunately, the state of Malaysian animation has come a long way since those shorts. 3D style animation is the way forward and a Malaysian animated show currently riding high is the much beloved Upin & Ipin, which features the adventures of 5 year old twin brothers in a fictional Malaysian kampung (village). Originally a side project for the blockbuster animated film Geng: The Adventure Begins (Malaysia’s first CGI-animated feature film which is one of the highest-grossing Malay-language films in history), Upin & Ipin was introduced on TV9 in 2007 as a six-episode Ramadhan month special, to instill significance of the Islamic holy month amongst children. To date, the series has reached its fourth season, including another Ramadan special season in 2008. Its third season which was more secularized and went under the new full title Upin & Ipin dan Kawan-Kawan and which premiered in early 2009, was picked up by Disney Channel Asia for the international market (airing in November 2009) with dubs in English (the official dub, as the credits and episode titles are in English as well), Mandarin and other languages.

The brainchild behind Upin & Ipin is Les’ Copaque Productions (not French, mind you, but rather a French-ised version of “last kopek” or “final chance”). Established in 2005 as a platform for young creative Malaysians to showcase their talents, Les’ Copaque is a MSC Malaysia-certified animation and film production company based in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Spearheaded by husband and wife team, Hj. Burhanuddin Radzi and Hjh. Ainon Ariff, the company’s main goal is to be a media production company that specializes in creating their own intellectual property that showcases local talents and Malaysian culture. It was this determination which helped Upin & Ipin clinch Best Animation at the Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival in 2007.

Aside from Malaysia, the Upin & Ipin franchise is also very popular in Indonesia which share linguistic and cultural similarities as the former. When it was picked up by Disney Channel Asia, not only is it available to view in the South East Asian countries, but also in Hong Kong and South Korea. It can also be viewed online, via Tonton, and YouTube (via lescopaque account).

Upin & Ipin: The zenith of Malaysian animation (so far) originally appeared on GreyReview.com on February 7, 2011.

This year, a total of 180 nominations from 16 member economies for 16 categories. “From a small member base of 5 countries in the first International APICTA Awards, we have now grown to include 17 nations across the Asia-Pacific region, most recently adding Taiwan to our ranks,” said Sutee Satanasathapon, Chairman of APICTA. The 16 member economies of APICTA are Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Since it started in 2001, the awards programme has recognized and rewarded the innovation of numerous ICT companies across the Asia-Pacific region. Past APICTA winners have contributed to the regional ICT Industry with two such examples being:

• CyberPlanet Interactive Co. Ltd., 2004 Winner for Media and Entertainment, has become a public-listed company and expanded into China and Japan to become the largest console game developer in South East Asia
• Les’ Copaque, 2007 Winner for Best Start-up Company, is now rated as one of Malaysia’s foremost production and animation houses with its flagship animation series, Upin & Ipin with broadcast in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong and South Korea.

Malaysia won 4 Awards

There are a total of 29 Malaysian finalists for this year’s Awards, consisting of 24 companies, 3 universities and 2 schools. Winners are judged based on these criteria:

• Uniqueness
• Market potential / value for public
• Functionalities and features
• Quality and application of technology
• Presentation

In this year’s International APICTA Awards, a total of 4 Malaysian entries winning the following categories – Research and Development, Tourism and Hospitality, E-Learning, and E-Government. Singapore-based Ephone International Pte Ltd clinched two awards – Best E-Health and Best Start-up Company – for its product, EPI Life. Other notable winners are IP Payments Account Receivable Solution from Australia, which won the Financial Industry Applications category and Thai company, Geomove Co. Ltd. for their Sensor Service Grid application, which won the Tools & Infrastructure category.

Here’s the full list of winners:
Best of Research and Development: nuRF Wireless Sensor Network and Smart Wireless System – Free Alliance (Malaysia)

Best of Tourism and Hospitality: GDX Guest Services Management – FCS Computer Systems (Malaysia)

Best of E-Learning: Jayonik Convoy Dynamic Driving Simulator System – Jayonik MSC Sdn Bhd (Malaysia)

Best of e-Government: eKasih National Databank on Poverty – Implementation Coordination Unit, Prime Minister’s Department (Malaysia)

Best of Start-Up Companies / Best of e-Health: EPI Life – Ephone International Pte Ltd (Singapore)

Best of Financial Industry Application: IP Payments Account Receivables Solution – IP Payments Pty Ltd (Australia)

Best of Tools and Infrastructure: Sensor Service GRID – Geomove Co. Ltd (Thailand)

Best of New Media and Entertainment: Scoreless Music Suite – Scoreless Music Pte Ltd (Singapore)

Best of Communications: Smoov.me – Smoov Pte Ltd (Singapore)

Best of Security Application: iMatch Mobile – PCS Security Pte Ltd (Singapore)

Best of E-Inclusion and E-Community: Brain Fitness Gymnasium for the Ederly – The Hong Kong Society for the Aged (Hong Kong)

Best of E-Logistics and Supply Chain Management: NEOtrace – NEO Invention Co. Ltd. (Thailand)

Best of Industrial Application: Java Human Machine Interface Engine – Thales Australia (Australia)

Best of Secondary Student Project: My mom’s mobile phone as my sister’s tutor – Salman Al Fansi Full Day School (Indonesia)

Best of Tertiary Student Projects: Stereoscopic video generation from Monoscopic Video – City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

APICTA Lifetime ICT Award

The evening also saw former Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad received a Lifetime ICT Achievement Award, for his contribution to the ICT industry. The MSC Malaysia is the brainchild of the Tun Mahathir.

Winners at the 10th International Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) 2010 originally appeared on GreyReview.com on October 17, 2010.

• Encouraging entrepreneurship: “…bankruptcy laws will be simplified to support a risk-taking culture, eliminate the stigma of failure and allow high calibre and credible entrepreneurs who fail to become active again (p 20);
• National Key Economic Areas, NKEAs: Information and communication technology, ICT as one of the 12 NKEAs (p. 15).
• Focus on soft infrastructure development: The 10th Malaysia Plan’s “allocation for non-physical infrastructure will be increased to 40%, compared with 21.8% in the 9MP. Focus will be given to skills development programmes, R&D activities and venture capital funding geared towards promoting a higher level of innovation in the country” (page 14);
• Growth funds: Mudharabah Innovation Fund “with an allocation of 500 million ringgit, will be introduced to provide risk capital to government venture capital companies” and Business Growth Fund “to bridge the financing gap between the early stage of commercialisation and venture capital financing for high tech products” (p. 20);
• Technology-driven development of NKEAs: “the application of high technology will be emphasised in the development of NKEAs. Technology platforms such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and high-end engineering will further increase the impact of the NKEAs on economic growth” (p. 16);
• Competition Law: The Law “will be introduced to provide a regulatory framework against market manipulation and cartel practices that may affect market efficiency” (p. 17);
• Working Capital Guarantee Scheme: Additional RM3 billion allocation for the Scheme, which is designed to “ensure that the SMEs have better access to financing facilities” (p 24).

Full speech transcript here.

10th Malaysia Plan on IT, entrepreneurship and startups, announced by PM @najibrazak originally appeared on GreyReview.com on June 10, 2010.

The Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), custodian of the MSC Malaysia, will spearhead the implementation of ICON, with the ultimate aim of unleashing groundswell of vibrant and sustainable digital content industry in Malaysia. Currently, MDeC is inviting individuals and companies to submit project proposals for the ICON programme. Malaysians and majority-owned Malaysian companies are eligible to apply for the Grant. But, is it hard to apply for the grant? To answer the question, here’s our not-so-famous 3-step Unofficial Guide.

INGREDIENTS LIST
1. Cool Ideas
2. Time
3. Official Forms: Project Application and Company Information.

DIRECTIONS

Step 1: Ideation (ETA: 1 week to 2 weeks)
Basically, the grant programme covers user-generated (ICONity) and educational (ICONedu) contents, for web and mobile. For ICONity, It can be a project to repurpose existing offline contents for online or web application for community with incorporation of user-generated contents. For ICONedu, educational contents can be for lifelong learning, from young children to senior citizen, and interactive learning tools like games and simulations, among others.

Think. Be creative. What content you plan to bring online? How can you repurpose your existing content? Which community you want to engage with using your content? Can you add more interactivity to your offline educational contents?

Step 2. Creation (ETA: 2 to 3 weeks)
Get the preformatted Application Forms to draft your project proposal. Extend and expand your ideas, in terms of commercialization, technology and financial. Good thing is you’re not expected to produce a thick project proposal! Each section with words limit, ranging from 125 words to 400 words. So, focus on brevity.

Here are the key sections you need to elaborate in the Project Application form, pertaining to your project idea:

• Value Proposition: What are the compelling factors of your idea? How can it benefits the various stakeholders? Also, outline the benefits your project can contribute to the National Broadband Plan.
• Market Target and Business Model: Who’s your primary (and secondary) target markets? And what are the market size and industry projection? Quote figures and market growth stats from reputable sources, if possible.
• Competitive Analysis: List out key competitors and how you can carve unique advantage over their offerings.
• Marketing Plan: Outline your marketing plan here and how you plan to go-to-market plan. Here you are requested to outline what commercialization activities you will undertake after completion of the project
• Content Development: A brief on how you plan to develop content for your proposed project. Also, how these contents can benefit the Malaysian National Broadband Plan.
• Technology Plan: Describe your technology implementation of your project. With words-limitation, a diagram goes a long way in helping the Approval Committee to construct a mental image of what you are planning to develop.
• Project Expenditure: Each applicant can apply up to RM100,000 with maximum project duration of 8 months. The grant money can be used for human resource, awareness/promotion campaigns, activities related to repurposing contents, content hosting and procurement of services.
• Project Activities Schedule: Provide details of your project activities, key deliverables and timeline

For more in-depth details, download the Infopacks for both ICONity and ICONedu. Also, do check out this useful blog posting titled ‘Early Stage Web Product Development,’ which is packed with information related to product design, development and management.

Step 3. Submission (ETA: 1 day)
For official submission, print out 2 hardcopy and 1 softcopy (in CD) together with Company Forms (Form 9, 24, 49). Send to the Secretariat of the ICON Grant Programme (address available in the Application Forms). For queries, email icon [at] mdec [dot] com [dot] my or visit the ICON’s official website.

There you go! Just submit your project idea to MDeC and if it’s approved, you’ll get up to RM100,000 to transform your idea into reality. No processing fee required. No payback. And the Government will not take any stake in your venture once it’s completed. Good luck!

The Unofficial Guide to MSC Malaysia ICON Grant Application (Forms Included) originally appeared on GreyReview.com on September 1, 2009.

Founded by Aaron Gill in 2006, the MSC Malaysia status start-up can easily passed off as yet another business contacts repository service, as offered by players like Plaxo, LinkedIn and Xing. Although its contacts management comes with nice features like highly customizable Contact Form and flexible tagging, it acts more like a complementary function to its web/mobile information delivery.

Information Push and Pull

EzyPzy’s Listings offers information-on-demand (information pull) facility. Here’s how it works. Create a Listing from EzyPzy’s web, Ajaxy interface. Each Listing is assigned an Ezykode.

For example, an Ezykode for a restaurant can be “Daily Specials.” The Ezykode is promoted on the restaurant’s promotional materials and those interested to find out more about the daily promotions can text message “EZY Daily Specials” to 36881. The restaurant owner can choose either to send out text-based (SMS) promotion information or pictures (MMS) to the requester. The mobile number of the requester will be automatically entered into the restaurant’s contacts list on EzyPzy.

This information pull service by EzyPzy can adapt to many settings, be it selling of real estate and automobile and also sending daily updates to conference participants.

EzyPzy Dashboard

Users can also create Campaign, which involves sending emails and/or text messages to predefined contacts/leads (information push).

The EzyPzy Menu

EzyPay charges service ‘subscription’ fee, per-month basis. Fee ranging from RM0 to RM300, depending on the size of contacts repository and number of Listings (see Table below). At any time, a user can easily upgrade (and downgrade) their usage plan.

The Pricing Plan

On top of the ‘subscription’ fee, EzyPzy also charges its customers a standard rate of RM0.15 per SMS and RM0.30 per MMS for text messages sent out from EzyPzy system.

From Features to Solution

According to Founder and CEO Aaron Gill, EzyPzy was originally conceptualized as a tool to assist real estate agents to manage their property listings online and push information to their potential leads via mobile phones. As development progressed, the application organically grew and became an integrated information delivery solution.

EzyPzy continues to grow by adding layer upon layer of features and capabilities, in order to differentiate itself in the marketplace. In coming months, the company will introduce new features and functionalities:

• Embeddable customizable contact form, which can be embedded on any website; contact details entered into the form are automatically stored to EzyPzy contacts repository,
• Automated contact details capture of scanned name cards, and
• Scheduler for its email and SMS Campaign.

Launched in May 21 2008 during the World IT Congress in Kuala Lumpur, EzyPzy has over 150 clients storing over 12,000 contact records. The company is one of the first five recipients of the MSC Malaysia’s Technopreneur Pre-Seed Fund.  EzyPzy has been used in two major events in Malaysia, namely the Monsoon Cup and Miss Malaysia Indian Global Pageant. Besides Malaysia, the company has started offering its service in Singapore.

Information Pull / Push Made Easy by EzyPzy originally appeared on GreyReview.com on November 27, 2008.

The 15 promising open-source companies were selected from a total 46 open-source companies (out of 1929 MSC Malaysia status companies, as of Nov 25 2008). However, for whatever reason, MDeC didn’t reveal the identities of the 15 companies.

A simple search (by MSC Malaysia qualifying activities) with the term ‘open source‘ from the MSC Malaysia Company Directory only yields 10 companies, namely:

1. Byte Craft Sdn Bhd
2. Microlink Solutions Bhd
3. KZEN Solutions Sdn Bhd
4. MNS Systems (MSC) Sdn Bhd
5. Getronics Technology Sdn Bhd
6. ELX Operating Systems Sdn Bhd
7. Synchroweb Software (MSC) Sdn Bhd
8. Abyres MSC Sdn Bhd
9. Jayway Malaysia Sdn Bhd
10. Open Application Systems Sdn Bhd

15 Mysterious ‘Thoroughbred’ Malaysian Open-Source Companies originally appeared on GreyReview.com on November 25, 2008.

• Elevyn, web-based platform that connects community-based sellers to a socially-conscious market
• EzyPzy, contact management, information repository and information distribution web application
• Urekalabs, creator of videoAD and roo.my
• Thisisbinding.com, print, photocopy and bind your work
• TeDDology, social network for Malaysia’s technopreneurs
• SocialWalk, social network that revolves around events

Budding Ventures

Devan Singaram (Elevyn), Kenneth Kiffer Fong (EzyPzy), Roni Shah Mustapha (Urekalabs), Hakim Albasrawy (Thisisbinding), Asyraf Abdul Rahman (TeDDology) and Tham Keng Yew (SocialWalk), together with Roslan Bakri Zakaria, shared their experiences applying for the Pre-Seed Fund and also their start-up adventures. 

For those interested, some key considerations when applying for the Fund:

1. All you need is an idea (with some elements of IT, of course). 
2. The “Application Form” is important (and probably the most time-consuming).
3. Have a right revenue model (e.g. target market and how you plan to get to that market)
4. Research on your competitors
5. Technology innovation
6. Business innovation
7. Present your ideas, concisely
8. Time and pace yourself during presentation
9. Reference – letter of support is helpful
10. Know your facts related your business ideas

Budding Ventures Showcased at Startup Camp KL ’08 originally appeared on GreyReview.com on November 23, 2008.