The inaugural BetaPitch Kuala Lumpur hosted by Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and betahaus saw CapitalBay awarded as the winner of the startup competition.

As the winners, CapitalBay will travel to Berlin on 15th of November to attend Investor Day, and to represent Southeast Asia against global startup finalists from each of the twelve regional BetaPitch competitions.

CapitalBay was also awarded with prize money of €5,000, a trip to the Silicon Valley, a free co-working space at Berlin-based co-working hub betahaus for one month and assistance for market access through betahaus’ European network.

“We are proud to win the first ever BetaPitch startup competition in Kuala Lumpur, which is an acknowledgement for all the hard work we have invested in the past two years in enabling executing SME financing faster, cheaper and better with our digital onboarding process.

“We have a powerful mission with a scalable solution, and we are glad that BetaPitch opened up the opportunity for us to enter the EU startups ecosystem, in exploring financing the EU-Malaysia trade corridor,” said CapitalBay co-founder, Darrel Ang.

BetaPitch is a global startup competition taking place in twelve countries around the world, including Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Egypt, Bosnia, Turkey, South Korea and Malaysia.

Out of over 56 startups that applied for BetaPitch Kuala Lumpur, 10 were selected to pitch at the finals where the jury was made up of stakeholders across the government and the venture capital sector including; MDEC Growth System Development vice president, Norhizam Kadir; betahaus chief operations officer, Iva Jankovic; Media Medik & Krypto POS Visual EFX investor and advisor, Datuk Arulchelvam; 1337 Ventures chief executive officer, Bikesh Lakhmichand; Malaysia Global Innovation & Creative Centre (MaGIC) executive director, Johnathan Lee.

“It was a hard decision for the jury to pick a single winner as all of the contestants delivered their business ideas with passion.

“In the end CapitalBay won because of their strong value proposition, they have a close-knit team working on a scalable business model that already has a good market traction in Asia and have the potential to scale further in Europe,” said Norhizam.

“With German businesses being at the forefront of global innovation, and Berlin being the startup capital of Europe, MDEC has decided to host the first BetaPitch competition with betahaus in Southeast Asia.

“The partnership with betahaus will help smooth the way for Southeast Asian startups to enter the German and European markets and allow them to leverage upon betahaus’s network and expertise.

The BetaPitch competition will let us showcase the inherent potential of technology startups based here and across Southeast Asia,” added Norhizam.

The selected startups that participated in the finals were; Borderpass, an airport immigration autogate startup; Mobiversa, a mobile card terminal developer; Sales Candy, a sales funnel CRM; CapitalBay, a supply chain and financing management provider; Favoriot, an IoT project planner; Hyped Mind AI, a mobile app developer; Luxtag by NEM, a Blockchain-based anti-counterfeit and theft technology provider; GridMarkets, a Cloud-based content processing platform; Petbacker, a Dog Home Boarding and Pet Sitting App; Aglonera - an Indonesian E-Commerce platform.

Earlier this year, MDEC had signed two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with betahaus and Startup AsiaBerlin (SUAB) in Germany, aimed at accelerating the cross-market penetration by businesses and entrepreneurs between the two countries.

While betahaus will provide a soft-landing zone and assistance to Malaysia-based companies seeking to enter into the German and European markets and channel businesses in its network eyeing the Southeast Asian market to MDEC, in return, MDEC will provide betahaus’ recommended start-ups easy access to Malaysia Digital Hubs, as well as business advisory and assistance.

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