KUALA LUMPUR: Budding inventors and technopreneurs in the country will now be better able to improve on their creations, thanks to a revamped Cradle Investment Programme (CIP). CIP is a pre-seed funding scheme managed by Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd.

The programme — now called CIP Catalyst — allows innovative individuals to apply and receive conditional grants of up to RM150,000, which will be disbursed in three tranches.

Cradle Fund did not say how much funds in total it has earmarked for the programme.

“Funds will be distributed based on a technopreneur’s needs to prepare a more robust prototype,” said Cradle Fund chief executive officer Nazrin Hassan.

Under the new programme, technopreneurs will now have the funds to carry out other aspects of product development, such as intellectual property registration, market feasibility studies, as well as product sampling and packaging.

This is important, said Nazrin, because the technopreneurs will need to know their target market well to be better able to place their products or services.

Previously, technopreneurs only received RM50,000 under CIP and that was for the whole prototype development process. Due to that, the technopreneurs had to limit their market research activities.

Technopreneurs will now have four months to complete each tranche. To qualify for the next tranche, they will need to meet criteria set by CIP.

Qualification for the next tranche will be reviewed by the Industry Approval Committee at CIP, which will base its decision on the development team’s performance, quality of the deliverables, and justification for the idea’s viability to proceed further.

This allows for sensitivity tweaking and path correction should industry trends change. It also mitigates the risks involved by allowing more flexibility in investment in the right direction for the technopreneur.

Nazrin said the change in the pre-seed programme was needed in order for CIP to fit better with the current entrepreneurial development segment.

He said entrepreneurial funding has changed over the last five years because there are less venture capitalist out there who are willing to fund raw ideas.

The number of venture capitalists in the country has dwindled from 49 to 15, with most of them opting to invest in the more stable equity market.

“Our revamped programme will make entrepreneurs more market ready and I believe this new generation of technopreneurs will be stronger and more sustainable,” Nazrin said after a signing ceremony between CIP and the Malaysian Association of Creativity and Innovation (MACRI).

The MOU formalises a marketing collaboration between CIP and MACRI.

CIP will now also involve the holding of talks and workshops on business modelling, as well as the strengthening of Cradle Fund’s mentoring system aimed at helping technopreneurs improve on their ideas.

“Most times, business models need to be worked out and thought through, and we also need to go down to the ground to get to know good business mentors who can contribute (to help perfect an idea),” Nazrin said.

Several technopreneurs attending the MOU signing on Tuesday said they welcomed the revamped programme. They said it would give them more options in their attempts to perfect their products and services.

Inventor and CIP recipient Bugs Tan said the programme gives inventors more opportunity to do better develop their products.

“With the increased funds, we can file patents to protect our ideas, hire more workers, and get more material for our projects. We couldn’t do this with only RM50,000,” he said, adding that with more material and workers, a prototype could be commercialised much sooner.

MACRI president Datuk Ghazi Sheikh Ramli said the revamped programme fits in well with his plans for an initiative he calls the Grassroots Innovation Project (GIP).

GIP’s mission is similar to that of the National Innovation Foundation, mooted by Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Datuk Maximus Ongkili recently.

Like the foundation, GIP aims to encourage innovation at the grassroots level — from among ordinary Malaysians in the hope that such moves will help improve their livelihoods.

CIP Catalyst can also help the grassroots level perfect their ideas and commercialise them, said Ghazi.

“It will be just like an assembly line where CIP and the technopreneurs keep churning out protoypes that are continuously developed until they are good enough to market,” he added

Taken from: http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2008/6/27/technology/20080627170248&sec=technology

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