KUALA LUMPUR: SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp) is on course to turn Malaysia into a regional by harnessing another 10 local drone companies by year-end to add to the existing 15.
“We are looking at small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) assistance through the High Impact Programme 2 (HIP 2) which aims to bring research to market, providing solutions to market,” CEO Noor Azmi Mat Said told reporters here today.
According to him, SME Corp is open to any proposal in the ongoing Global Drone Conference & Hackathon 2020 (GDCKL2020), organised by SME Corp in collaboration with Best Events Productions Sdn Bhd.
He said that while HIP 2 has a fund allocation of RM5 mil for disbursement to several industries, the number of approvals for the fund would depend on the proposals and market readiness of the industries to adopt and use the solutions.
“If possible at least 10 companies … but the solutions must be really disruptive and feed market needs,” he stressed.
For example, he added, the organisation has received proposals on using drones equipped with thermal cameras and facial recognition technology to detect the body temperature of people below, which could be used in dealing with the current Covid-19 outbreak.
Noor Azmi noted that border monitoring and surveillance would also benefit from the use of drones, as well as the oil & gas and agriculture sectors.
“We want our SMEs to look into these areas,” he said, adding that drones are even utilised in flood warning situations for collecting data and producing weather forecasts.
Other agencies were also making efforts to spur the drone industry, he added.
On HIP 1, Noor Azmi explained that it concerned the digitalisation of business licensing and business establishment applications with the materialisation of malaysiabiz.my.
SME Corp is targeting for 17 agencies to be involved in malaysiabiz.my, from the current 11, by mid-year, he added.
The two-day GDCKL2020 which began today is a public-private partnership initiative aimed at empowering and supporting the growth and development of local drone solution providers, as well as promote a sustainable ecosystem to drive the drone industry in Malaysia. – March 2, 2020, Bernama
