Web hosting company and eCommerce solutions provider Exabytes launches its first tech funding program, ‘Cockroach Startup Program’. The program is aimed at local aspiring startups during pre-seed and seed stages.
Launched on the 1st of April, the program offers support in two stages.
The company will offer RM3,000 worth of credit at Stage 1 for 1000 qualified startups who have joined incubator or accelerator program to use Exabytes services for one year. This includes the use of services such as Domains to Hosting, Servers and Online Marketing.
20 shortlisted startups which have successfully developed their products will be able to proceed to Stage 2, whereby they will continue to receive Exabytes’ support worth RM30,000 in Credit for their production use. These startups will also get RM20,000 in cash in exchange for Exabytes to gain 5% equity shareholding in their business.
Why Cockroach? 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.”
Malaysia is the 3rd largest market for startups. Grab, iflix and HappyFresh are just a few notable Malaysian founded examples that have established themselves in the South-East Asia region. According to Chan, over the years, Malaysia’s startup ecosystem has seen more and more entrepreneurs with innovative products coming into the market.
“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…. even the possibility of bringing their ventures to the global startups ecosystem,” explains Chan.
Since 2001, Exabytes have helped many SMEs to grow their businesses by leveraging on their online platform services. Besides being awarded as one of the BEST Domain Resellers by MYNIC (The Malaysia Network Information Centre), 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 online marketing tools.
