Common Ground Fostering Growth of Start-up Ecosystem Through PETRONAS Dagangan Berhad Partnership

Wire

Common Ground Fostering Growth of Start-up Ecosystem Through PETRONAS Dagangan Berhad Partnership

In the bid to spur the growth of Malaysia’s existing start-up ecosystem, PETRONAS Dagangan Berhad (PDB) joins forces with Common Ground in bring the latter’s latest co-working space in the country; its seventh venue to date.

Left to right: Dato’ Sri Syed Zainal Abidin, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of PDB; Juhn Teo, Co Founder of Common Ground; and Aadrin Azly, Head of Retail Business, PDB

The partnership looks to provide the community a conducive platform to network and co-create revolutionary ideas. The two companies will also be curating a collaborative programme that focuses on guiding and mentoring startups to enable the corporations to innovate solutions that are relevant to PDB’s business.

The incorporation of Common Ground into PETRONAS Station Jalan Kolam Air Lama marks the cornerstone of PDB’s plan to transform the station into an innovation hub, which is now known as The Place @ Ampang. The location covers a space of 22,285 sq ft and equipped with a large event space and ten meeting rooms.

“The Place @ Ampang is one of PDB’s long-term strategies to reinvent our retail business, focusing on creating innovative solutions to enhance our customer experience. While we have some exciting ideas brewing, we are open to receiving new ones as we look to encourage the growth of the local start-up industry. This fits in well with our continuous effort in supporting local SMEs and vendors to be part of our business ecosystem. We want to reach out to more and this is where Common Ground will play a central role in connecting us with the rest of the startup community out there, to further explore and create greater innovations,” says Dato’ Sri Syed Zainal Abidin, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of PDB.

The venue will also further aid Common Ground by diversifying its community offering by creating an ecosystem around growth and progression. With Common Ground having the largest number of co-working space venues and a thriving community of businesses, the partnership between the two companies is ideal for fostering innovation among start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Juhn Teo, co-founder of Common Ground shares: “We are incredibly excited to partner with PDB. With our core values focused on community building, Common Ground Ampang is geared to create a collaborative ecosystem between startups and SMEs, and PETRONAS as a whole. We are certain that with PETRONAS’ expertise, we’ll be able to provide the startup community with the guidance, mentorship and connections needed to take the next step in their business’ growth.”

Common Ground Ampang houses an in-house café, event space, board rooms, several smaller meeting rooms, quiet lounges, and three formats of workspace – hot desking, fixed desking and private offices – some of which will be occupied by the PDB team, in its effort to provide the startup community easy access to PETRONAS’ group of companies through PDB.

In addition to Common Ground, The Place @ Ampang also houses an innovation lab called The Sandbox, where it will serve to facilitate the design thinking process from ideation to testing for the startup community. Further to this, there will also be a Customer Excellence Area focused on gathering customer feedback and insights that will aid the ideas, research and prototype-building process.