Why Malaysia appeared an attractive soft landing spot into the ASEAN market?

Malaysia-Korea Startup Partnership 2019, a side event by Korean delegates in KL, where President of Korea and Tun Mahathir had discussions between two countries.

ASEAN has a potential of being the 4th largest economy by 2025 (with a continuous GDP growth of >5.2%) after China, EU and US. However, market access to ASEAN remains a major challenge due to many reasons especially diversity in cultures, policies and languages.

Malaysia positioned as the gateway to ASEAN, is located at the center, has a higher concentration of ASEAN people, with a mix culture led by the Malay Bumiputra who can assist expansion to one of the larger economy in ASEAN, Indonesia, whereas the Chinese can assist penetration into China via DFTZ, and Indian provide access into the India’s market. Malaysia is culturally similar to Singapore with a decently good financial system and three times lower in cost of operation.

Based on Global Competitive Index 2018, Malaysia is also political stable despite a recent change of Government, a good financial system, with healthy human capital, supportive infrastructure and a vibrant innovation ecosystem. 

On the other side, Korea is a mature startup ecosystem with advanced deep-tech startups, who are contented within an already mature market with higher spenders. They're proud of the Korean culture and language, they've stronger bond and pride between their people. Therefore they feel suffice and comfortable within the country. It's a right move for the President of Korea to encourage Korea startups to expand outward especially to ASEAN.

MaGIC and the Government has received huge interests from many countries to expand into ASEAN market, however, there're still many issues needing attention from policy makers, such as foreign visa, tax incentive, business entity processing, cross-border trade and etc. Lot of work needs to be done to REALLY enable market access into ASEAN as a whole.