Founder and CEO, Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin, did not set out to build a fintech.  She set out to test a simple premise: A single donation, structured to recycle rather than disappear, could do what charity cannot. What followed was a VC-backed platform operating across three countries, multi-international awards, and a proprietary credit scoring system that Malaysian financial institutions are now seeking to access. She explains how a small pilot during Malaysia’s first pandemic lockdown became the foundation for a financial inclusion model that is drawing attention from investors and policymakers across the region. Three Women, RM3,000, One ConditionIn 2020, Malaysia’s first national lockdown had shuttered businesses overnight. Three women micro-entrepreneurs, one selling mixed rice, another making cookies and one selling Malay traditional treats, had watched their cash flow disappear in a matter of days. They had no credit history and no collateral. Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin, then running her second technology company, had this idea for a fintech that facilitates paying it forward.  She reached out to friends and raised RM3,000, then gave these three ladies zero-interest microfunding with one condition: when they recovered, they would pay it back so the money could go to the next woman in line.One month later, the three women had collectively generated RM18,000 in revenue.They are not outliers. Some 15% of Malaysia’s adult population of 23 million are unbanked[1], meaning they have little to no access to the formal financial system. Another 40% were considered underbanked, holding basic accounts but receiving none of the services that actually build economic security: credit, insurance, or long-term savings. Many are housewives running home-based or micro businesses, invisible to the formal financial Institutions, not because they lack discipline or potential to run a business, but because they never had the opportunity to generate a credit history. For these women, sometimes a small amount of funding is not just a convenience.  It is the difference between having a business and having none.MADCash steps in with capital and training to help realise their aspirations.The beneficiaries of the loans have started a wide array of self-sustaining ventures, including food products, F&B industry, agriculture, mobile wellness and beauty services  as well as heritage and batik crafts. Some have built their businesses online through social media and e-commerce, while others have formalised their financial management for the first time. Behind each of these ventures is a woman who, without access to structured capital and training, would have had no formal pathway to build one.“We see entrepreneurship as a way to level the playing field in achieving gender equality, and when women increase their take-home pay, this will in turn, build higher economic growth for their families and their community,” Nuraizah says. MADCash provides zero-interest micro funds to women entrepreneurs alongside a structured entrepreneurship program while building a Future Bankability Index which predicts how long it would take a woman with limited or impaired credit history to become bankable.  The loans are not made out of charity.  They are a stepping stone to long-term financial empowerment and, eventually, to a place in the formal financial system.Source: MADCash Impact ReportTo date, the fintech has supported over 1,500 women entrepreneurs, with approximately 1,200 receiving direct funding.  MADCash has disbursed close to RM3 million in micro funds, with an additional RM1.5 million facilitated through a partner bank. Over a one-year tracking period up to September 2025, its participating women entrepreneurs generated cumulative revenue of RM5.4 million from their business ventures. In its recently released impact report[2], MADCash notes that participation in its entrepreneurship programme grew exponentially as the company expanded support beyond financing to capability building. Last year alone, it supported more than 500 women entrepreneurs.The Engineer Who Saw What Bankers MissedNuraizah holds an engineering degree and spent years building technology companies, including CWorks Mobile, a mobile application development firm, and Madcat World, a software development company focused on community-based platforms. She understands systems, data, and scale.  With MADCash, the mission of helping the unbanked and underbanked addresses a clear funding gap in finance. The current formal financial system, which relied on credit history, collateral, and formal employment, was designed for a different kind of economic actor.   The women she was working with had real business discipline. They repaid on time.  Their revenues grew. They reinvested. “By enabling women to increase their take-home income, MADCash supports broader household stability and community-level economic growth. When you invest in a woman, she will give 90% back to her family and her community, and we have seen that with the ladies we work with and this is also true worldwide,” Nuraizah explains.  Source: MADCash Impact Report The Model: Why Zero Percent is Not Charity Like any startup, MADCash operates as a for-profit organisation in the fintech industry. The company is often misperceived as a social enterprise, even though its business model is designed to be commercially sustainable while delivering measurable impact. The instinctive reaction from the finance world, when MADCash pitches zero-interest microfunding, is scepticism. Zero interest sounds like a subsidy.  It sounds unsustainable.  Nuraizah has heard it many times.  Her answer is structural, not ideological.The zero-interest model is grounded in Qard Hasan, a benevolent loan concept from Islamic finance that emphasises trust and repayment without interest.  The commercial elegance is in the recycling mechanism. A single donation does not fund one entrepreneur.  It funds many, sequentially.  A woman receives between RM1,000 and RM5,000 in micro financing, repaid over ten months through monthly instalments.  As she repays, the capital is redeployed to the next entrepreneur in the queue.  One donation becomes a perpetual fund.MADCash has also been introducing elements of Murabahah (cost plus financing) that emphasise shared responsibility and value creation, to ensure flexibility in sustaining operations commercially over the long term.“MADCash works with the simple premise that charity only solves a problem at one point in time. Our focus is on helping entrepreneurs build sustainable businesses so that they are not dependent on charity or aid,” she says. The Infrastructure Play: Scoring the Unscorable MADCash’s platform generates something that Malaysian financial institutions have found difficult to build independently: a credit dataset on borrowers that the formal system has never been able to profile.When a woman entrepreneur without a formal credit history applies for a business loan, a traditional bank faces a binary problem. It cannot assess her risk because the inputs it normally uses, such as payslips or credit reports, do not exist. So, the bank declines. The entrepreneur stays underserved.  The cycle continues.By onboarding entrepreneurs digitally, tracking repayment behaviour, monitoring business revenue growth, and measuring capability development through its academy programmes, MADCash generates a dataset about each entrepreneur.  This dataset is the foundation of its Future Bankability Index, designed to measure the potential creditworthiness of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) not based on what they own today, but on how they behave over time.  For the entrepreneurs, this is a structured pathway to become bankable over time.“As an impact-driven fintech, we utilise technology to onboard, educate, and engage with our beneficiaries, while providing them with access to support and networks,” she says. How VC Supports Impact-Driven Fintech MADCash raised RM5 million in its latest funding round led by Artem Ventures, with added backing by MSW Ventures. The venture capital funding reflects that MADCash is a scalable business with a trajectory towards long term growth and profitability.“A key challenge was raising sufficient funds under management to be deployed as loans, which required us to redefine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Islamic social finance funds could be utilised. Our investors have been our sounding board from the beginning, helping us refine our business model and improve how we manage and grow the company,” says Nuraizah.MADCash expanded internationally to Singapore and Tajikistan, while also strengthening its credibility through Malaysian and Singaporean investors participating in both pre-seed and seed rounds. In September 2024, the platform began providing entrepreneurship training in Singapore. In Tajikistan, the platform has been deployed in partnership with the IMON Foundation, serving a predominantly Muslim-majority market with significant unmet demand for Shariah-compliant microfinance.Multiple international recognitions have strengthened MADCash’s credibility in this expansion push. Last year, the company won the top prize at the 7th EFICA (Ethical Finance Innovation Challenge and Awards) in Dubai and was named the Catapult: Inclusion Southeast Asia winner, an accelerator organised by LHoFT Luxembourg House of Financial Technology and the Asian Development Bank. MADCash was also awarded the Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards for Closing the Gender Gap and Best For Profit for Under-served Communities in 2024. Balancing Profit and Purpose   Small businesses funded by microloans create jobs and services within communities, stimulating local economies and reducing unemployment. Entrepreneurs then reinvest profits to grow their business, boosting economic activity. This cycle leads to lasting improvements for micro entrepreneurs, increased financial inclusivity, and added benefits to the communities, including job creation and economic growth.For venture investors, the opportunity is in recognising that the Future Bankability Index and the data layer it represents is infrastructure. The company that builds the alternative credit scoring standard for Southeast Asia’s unbanked women entrepreneurs is a data business with recurring-revenue potential from financial institutions that need exactly that dataset to expand their addressable market.The VC ecosystem has a role to play in driving this shift, Nuraizah says, suggesting that investors balance a profit motive with social impact. “More VCs should establish funds designated for female-led and impact-driven companies. Intentional capital allocation and ecosystem support can significantly accelerate the growth of female-led companies in Malaysia,” she says. MADCash is currently working on adopting AI tools to improve and simplify their registration and profiling process.  They are also looking at building tools to engage better and encourage rewards in prompt repayment.  Sources:[1] “Limited offerings, fierce competition stall progress in Malaysia's digital banking sector”, The Business Times [2]MADCash Impact Report 2022–2025. 

A decade ago, Cheong Jin Xi had a vision to make drones more accessible to the masses. Today, Aonic operates across 15 countries, holds major contracts with Malaysian plantation groups, and is profitable. But part of the story that doesn’t usually make the headlines is what’s happening in the paddy fields of northern Malaysia.The problem that shaped the companyMalaysia’s agriculture sector has long faced a structural challenge that no policy document fully captures: the people doing the hardest physical work are getting older, and their children are leaving. For smallholder paddy farmers in states like Kedah and Perlis, applying pesticides and fertilisers means carrying a heavy backpack sprayer across uneven terrain, often in the heat, with direct chemical exposure.  It is physically punishing work, and for decades, there was no practical alternative.Cheong saw this not as a social problem but as an engineering one. If you could automate the spraying, you could remove the labour constraint entirely. Aonic’s Mist Drone, built for blanket spraying in open-field crops, is up to 20 times more efficient than manual methods in paddy fields. Its locally engineered and manufactured Oryctes drone, now known as Mist Tec, delivers point-to-point precision spraying at eight times the efficiency of manual labour for crops like oil palm and durian. Both are supported by proprietary software like Airamap Desktop and the Mist Flight App.  Aonic has also made inroads with agricultural companies that operate at a larger scale. In large plantation sites, applications of chemicals were previously done manually with human labour. This made it difficult for companies to gather data on when and how much chemicals were applied.Mist Tec solves this by automating input application and gathers the data for each individual tree and field, providing useful information to growers on maximising efficiency and production.That understanding came from years of direct fieldwork.  “This was during the first five years of our operations,” Cheong recalls.  “Such hands-on experience shaped how we built our solutions. By running fieldwork ourselves, we understood exactly where automation could transform operations.”Cheong sees the shift as structural rather than incremental. “Farmers already understand the value, banks offer financing, cooperatives provide grants, and governments subsidise mechanisation,” he says. “What once felt like pushing uphill has grown into industry-wide momentum.”What scale looks like on the groundAonic’s growth metrics are well documented with triple-digit CAGR since 2022, over USD60 million in annual revenue and profitable since 2023.  In a recent announcement, the company secured USD10 million in funding during a Series A round led by Kairous Capital.  But what the headline figures do not capture is the infrastructure the company has been quietly building underneath them.Aonic is not just selling drones.  It is building the conditions under which drone adoption becomes self-sustaining by setting up a wide network of 3S (sales, service, and spare parts) centres where customers can reach Aonic quickly, offering financing for smallholders who cannot absorb upfront costs, and training so they can fly effectively. The scale of the opportunity was always clear to Cheong, even when the path was not. “As adoption grew, it became clear that the opportunity in Southeast Asia’s agriculture sector was massive,” he says. “Most farms still relied on slow and inconsistent manual labour. With the right backing, we could scale quickly and build a more automated, data-driven agricultural ecosystem.”The ecosystem effectOne of the less visible outcomes of Aonic’s model is the micro-economy it has seeded in agricultural communities. Because purchasing a drone outright remains expensive for most smallholders, a class of local service providers has emerged where individuals use Aonic’s Mist Drones to offer spraying services to neighbouring farms. They are, in effect, small business owners created by the existence of the technology.At the other end of the scale, Aonic holds contracts with major plantation operators in the country.  Malaysian-made drone technology is now integral to the operations of one of the country’s largest agribusinesses. What emerges is a complete cycle from national capital that is channelled through institutional fund managers to spur homegrown innovations. Today, drone technology benefits all layers of the agricultural ecosystem, from the largest plantation groups down to a smallholder farmer in Kedah who no longer has to carry a backpack sprayer in the midday sun.Why the next generation is coming backPerhaps the most telling signal of Aonic’s impact is one that does not appear in any financial statement.  Across communities where drone adoption has taken hold, younger Malaysians who had left farming behind are returning. Not because farming has become easier out of necessity, but because it has become viable as a livelihood.  For some, it has become a business.For policymakers thinking about rural economic resilience and the long-term sustainability of Malaysia’s food production base, this is the outcome that matters.  It is a distinction Cheong returns to when describing Aonic’s early years.  “Being an early mover meant our biggest challenge was not selling agricultural drones, it was building the market.”  He added that farmers were not sure drones would work for their crops and questioned their commitment especially since banks wouldn’t finance the technology.  What this means for the ecosystemAonic’s trajectory reflects a broader thesis about how capital should work in Malaysia’s innovation economy.  The company did not scale because of a single funding event.  It scaled because it built the right foundations: a wide network of 3S centres, an end-to-end product ecosystem, a financing solution for the market it was trying to serve, a training and certification infrastructure, and a strong supply chain.Kairous Capital, backed by Jelawang Capital under the Emerging Fund Managers’ Programme, recognised this when it funded Aonic. The investment thesis was not speculative.  It was grounded in a company that had already demonstrated it could deliver measurable outcomes at scale, in sectors that matter to national development.Cheong is direct about what that backing made possible.  “We help farms work faster, more accurately, and with full visibility. VC capital enabled faster expansion. Our investors also provided guidance on go-to-market strategy, introduced us to other funding partners, and shared valuable external perspectives from their experience with other portfolio companies.”Aonic’s path reflects what is possible when determination, innovation, and the right partners come together. That is the kind of capital deployment that builds an ecosystem over time.   

Southeast Asia recorded its lowest annual venture capital deal count since 2018 last year.  That is the headline.  But that data point does not describe the full picture.Capital did not exit the market.  It became more selective.  Funding was concentrated toward higher-conviction bets, sectors with structural demand, and markets where policy and fundamentals were aligned. DealStreetAsia’s (DSA) 2025 Southeast Asia Startup Funding Report shows deal flow had stabilised across parts of the region during the second half of last year.   Equity deal volume and value per semester points to deal flows stabilisation in the second half of 2025. Source: DealStreetAsia, 2025 SEA Startup Funding ReportIn Malaysia, total equity funding reached $257 million from 40 deals in 2025, up from $141 million across 58 deals in 2024. Concurrently, foreign VCs are looking to deploy capital into Malaysian startups for the first time1, policy catalysts like the New Investment Incentive Framework2 (NIIF) are taking hold, and the broader investment environment has strengthened. Top 10 equity fundraisers in Malaysia in 2025. Source: DealStreetAsia, 2025 SEA Startup Funding Report.The concentration is visible in the data: fewer deals, larger cheques, more late-stage rounds.  On the surface, it looks like cautious investors simply being more selective. The question for 2026 is not whether activity is recovering. It is what kind of market is forming after the reset.Three structural shifts are visible. 1. A Clear Flight to QualityAs DSA puts it, tougher times create resilient founders. That resilience is now showing up at the fundraising table. The types of companies getting funded have changed. The startups attracting capital today tend to have credible unit economics, distribution through strategic partners, and founders who built operational discipline through the downturn, not in spite of it. There is a noticeable tilt toward business models that generate recurring revenue and have clear monetisation: business-to-business (B2B) platforms, supply chain solutions, enterprise software, and sector-specific fintech. These aren’t necessarily the most exciting pitches in the room, but they tend to retain customers and defend margins.“Local founders are exhibiting enhanced technical expertise and regional aspirations, reflecting the evolving maturity of Malaysia’s innovation ecosystem. Institutional investors are placing greater emphasis on disciplined go-to-market strategies, capital efficiency, and governance preparedness. Expectations are high for founders to be able to be receptive to feedback and to adapt their business plans, as access to capital becomes more discerning and oriented toward long-term sustainability,” says Vynn Capital founding and managing partner Victor Chua.In this current climate, the fundraising bar remains high for founders. Improving sentiment has not translated into easier capital. Expectations have increased.For fund managers, this environment reinforces the importance of discipline. Managers who maintained underwriting standards during the downturn are better positioned today. In a selective market, quality of selection and pacing of deployment become decisive.It is a calibration period for the region. 2. AI Capital Flows Are Accelerating, and Getting More Discerning Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to attract a disproportionate share of venture funding globally. Southeast Asia is participating in this shift, particularly in enterprise use cases such as financial services automation, logistics optimisation and industrial software. The region’s data analytics sector, comprising AI and machine learning, saw $214 million in funding value last year with a noticeable uptick during the second half, according to DSA’s report.What has shifted, though, is investor scrutiny. There is a clear distinction between companies with proprietary technical capability and those using AI as a feature rather than a core advantage. Depth of engineering, defensible data and sustainable monetisation are being evaluated more rigorously. For Malaysia, this is relevant in a concrete way. The country’s expanding data centre footprint, its place in the semiconductor supply chain, and government commitments to digital infrastructure create a foundation for applied AI development. There are emerging opportunities where AI intersects with sectors Malaysia has genuine strengths in: agriculture, financial services and supply chain management.As capital concentrates in AI, fund manager capability becomes increasingly important.  Evaluating technical risk and long-term defensibility requires expertise. The current cycle is likely to reward managers who combine sector knowledge with disciplined underwriting. 3. Public Listings are re-entering the Exit ConversationVenture capital depends on realised returns.  Liquidity enables capital recycling and sustains the funding cycle. None if it works without exits.  And in Malaysia, that cycle is starting to close.Malaysia is beginning to see more VC-backed companies approach listing readiness3.  SkyeChip Technologies, a chip design firm backed by investors including Gobi Dana Impak Ventures Fund, has filed for listing on Bursa Malaysia’s Main Market. Additional companies are progressing toward potential listings on both Main and ACE Markets. This development matters for several reasons.For founders, it demonstrates that companies can scale locally and access public capital markets. For VCs, it expands exit pathways beyond trade sales or secondary transactions.  For limited partners weighing whether to allocate to Malaysian VCs, it provides evidence that the ecosystem can deliver realised outcomes, not only paper valuations.What often gets overlooked is the role VCs play long before the listing itself. Enhancing governance, establishing institutional credibility and reporting discipline, and supporting revenue diversification are built over time.  These are products of years of structured support. As more VC-backed and listing-ready companies emerge, they will strengthen Malaysia’s credibility as a growth-stage capital market in the region.Strengthening Malaysia’s VC EcosystemThese shifts are connected.  A market that rewards quality produces stronger companies.  AI investment raises technical standards, creating a generation of high-growth opportunities for those with the depth to capture them.  And viable exits complete the loop, reinforcing capital recycling in the ecosystem and thereby increasing investor confidence.In this environment, the quality of fund managers is central.  Governance standards, deployment pacing, sector expertise and cross-border connectivity increasingly differentiate durable funds from cyclical participants.Jelawang Capital’s (Jelawang) continued effort to strengthen venture infrastructure under the Malaysia Venture Capital Roadmap reflects a longer-term approach.  We are building capable fund managers, attracting credible regional partnerships and crowding in private capital.Our role is to strengthen this cycle at the top of the capital flow.  Since the selection of the first five fund managers under the Emerging Fund Managers’ Programme (EMP) and Regional Fund Managers’ Initiative (RMI) in June 2025, deployment of more than RM60 million into early-stage companies has begun alongside participation of over RM30 million from additional capital providers beyond Jelawang’s own commitments.  The emphasis remains on institutional standards and long-term capability, rather than short-term deal velocity.Improving sentiment in 2026 indicates a market operating with clearer expectations and stronger filters. Selective capital, higher technical scrutiny and credible liquidity pathways together suggest a venture ecosystem that is becoming more disciplined and more durable. Sources:1. Growing foreign VC interest in Malaysia”, The Edge Malaysia2. “Selective foreign capital flows set to back Malaysia's growth, says UOB”, NST Online3. “VC funded companies preparing for Bursa debut”, The Edge Malaysia