Patrick Grove and Kuala Lumpur Internet City. RM5 billion GDV.

Patrick Grove is a familiar name in the online scene in Malaysia or perhaps the region or maybe even the international scene. He is the founder of Catcha Group and his latest venture is iFlix is valued at around US$500 million (RM2.218 Billion) (TechCrunch article here). When he sold iProperty to Newscorp, it was valued at US$534 million (RM2.369 billion)  (techinasia article here). Okay, now that we know that he is pretty famous and entrepreneurial and wealthy, let’s look at what he intends to also be doing next. It’s PROPERTY. According to an article by Karamjit Singh in digitalnewsasia, Patrick will be applying his digital experience into his first property project to be called the Kuala Lumpur Internet City (KLIC). Think about hundreds of IT-related companies and over 20,000 tech professionals all housed within the same place. WOW.
This is definitely a great vision for the IT startup scene in Malaysia. Digital Economy should be a priority because this will be the future growth moving forward. Without this, countries would be left behind because we cannot be striving to become the cheaper manufacturing site forever!  Besides, these days, many programmers and developers are trying to make it big in the startup world. GRAB is one such startup which grew extremely big and is now considered an ASEAN company. The gross development value for KLIC is projected to be US$1.1 billion (RM5 billion) and it will have a total of 5 million sq ft space. When Patrick was asked about having iFlix moving to Bandar Malaysia by Karamjit, He said, ““Companies like iflix will be within close proximity of other internet companies (a one minute bike ride from each other). KLIC aims to attract top talent to facilitate knowledge transfer via internet mentoring programs from expats that are based there. The development aims to house at least 1,000 internet-related companies as tenants and become a hub to 25,000 tech professionals.”

When we look at the starting salaries of fresh graduates these days, those who are proficient in certain programming languages are paid by far higher than other majors. Yes, it’s definitely above RM3,000 per month on the low side. Within a couple of years, do not be surprised that some of these people would be team leads and earning salaries that we thought belonged to managers just years ago. Take a look at some numbers from JobStreet.com Malaysia for the typical salaries earned by a Technical Lead. Look at their age… By the way, anyone earning above RM8,000 per month in Malaysia is already the Top 20 % income earners in Malaysia. Top income earners in Malaysia Parents, now you know what your kids should study. It’s not that three usual ones lah. Those require lots of time. No do, no money… For IT, if your kid can come up with a successful idea, it’s vacation forever. Too bad, I do not have a Computer Science degree. Well… I will work harder then. Happy learning and investing.
written on 5 April 2017
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