Jelawang and Dana Perintis deploy RM588M into Malaysian startups, 30 Bumiputera-led

Malaysia's government-linked investment companies channeled RM588 million into more than 130 local startups in 2025 through the venture-stage arms of the GEAR-uP programme, the Ministry of Finance said on 7 August 2026, with nearly a quarter of those companies Bumiputera-led (The Star). The headline figure sits on top of a freshly-raised RM2 billion annual GLIC commitment to Bumiputera businesses for 2026 — a 54% jump over 2025 — and signals that the state is now treating domestic venture capital as a strategic asset class, not a side programme.

The deal

The RM588 million venture-stage deployment was split across two principal vehicles. Jelawang Capital, formed in October 2024 from the merger of MAVCAP and Penjana Kapital and housed under Khazanah's Dana Impak, is Malaysia's first national fund-of-funds, with a RM1 billion allocation for 2024–2028. Dana Perintis, run by KWAP, is a separate RM500 million early-stage fund over the same period. In 2025, Jelawang mobilised RM290 million of its capital into emerging local and regional fund managers operating under thesis-driven mandates; those managers, in turn, invested into local startups across consumer, digital, agritech and edtech.

The 130+ companies supported figure is cumulative from 2020 to June 2026, not a single-year tally, so the 2025 deployment alone is a smaller share. Even so, the pace is a step-change from the pre-2024 era, when the same two state vehicles operated independently and at smaller cheque sizes.

Separately, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced on 15 June 2026 that GLIC commitments to Bumiputera businesses have been raised to RM2 billion for 2026, up from RM1.3 billion in 2025 (The Edge Malaysia). Khazanah's planned Dana Ciptawan fund will add a further RM200 million targeted at Bumiputera and other Malaysian mid-tier companies. Khazanah's broader Dana Impak has separately committed RM1 billion over 2024–2028 to mid-tier companies, partnering with Creador, Navis Capital and Granite Asia.

Why this matters

Two things are happening at once, and they reinforce each other.

The first is the consolidation of Malaysian venture capital under fewer, larger state vehicles. MAVCAP and Penjana Kapital — both 15+ year-old government VC firms — were merged into Jelawang Capital in 2024. Pair that with KWAP's Dana Perintis, the Ekuinas RM1 billion Tranche IV fund (which closed its Ain Medicare deal in April 2026 and is now deploying its remaining capital ahead of a fresh RM1–1.5 billion Tranche V in the second half), and the four biggest state vehicles now have roughly RM2.5 billion of active capital across early, growth and mid-tier stages. For private fund managers, that is a single, more navigable counterparty surface for co-investment, with the public capital explicitly designed to crowd in private ringgit alongside it.

The second is the deliberate opening of the venture stage to Bumiputera founders. The "Bumiputera Relay Race" — the government's term for staged public-to-private capital — has moved from rhetoric into numbers: of the 130+ startups supported since 2020, nearly a quarter are Bumiputera-led, and the new RM2 billion 2026 commitment plus Dana Ciptawan are designed to flow that share downstream. The likely effect is a more active pipeline of mid-cap Bumiputera targets feeding the government's relisted 10-Bumiputera-firm listing programme, which Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan confirmed in early August had been pushed to 2028 to give candidates more time to scale. For investors, the implication is that the IPO pipeline for Bumiputera-led growth-stage names now has a more clearly defined upstream feeder system.

What's next

Three dates to watch. Ekuinas is expected to announce the close of Tranche V — rumoured at RM1 to RM1.5 billion — in the second half of 2026, which would extend the active state capital pool into 2030. Dana Ciptawan is scheduled to launch in 2026 with RM200 million in initial capital. And the Finance Ministry's next GEAR-uP Progress Report, covering H1 2026 deployment, should land in early 2027. If the RM588 million 2025 figure is matched or exceeded on a full-year basis, the venture stage will be on a clear path toward a RM1.5 billion annual run-rate by 2027.

Source: The Star — "Jelawang Capital, Dana Perintis channel RM588mil into Malaysian startups in 2025"