NEM Foundation in Cyberview Living Lab Accelerator

First appeared on medium

This visit was part of the 1st NEM.io Foundation Leadership & Strategy Summit held between 21–25 August 2017.

Cyberview is an arm under the Malaysian Government’s Ministry of Finance with the mandate to spearhead the development of Cyberjaya — one of Malaysia’s first cybercities. Their goal is to create a Global Tech Hub that empowers the technology community with a holistic ecosystem to enable creation, innovation and worldwide business expansion of the technology industry. Read more about Cyberview here.

Cyberview Living Lab Accelerator started back in 2013 with just 16 startups in the area of mobile applications, games and social. To date, they have nurtured over 50 startups under Cyberview Living Lab Accelerator, creating 304 jobs with amazing partners and programme managers, this time with Finnext Capital who running the 2016/2017 batch.

We had Mahadhir Aziz, General Manager for the Technology Hub Development Division shared the direction Cyberview is heading and how the NEM blockchain technology could be a contributor to smart city initiatives like the cashless society, Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities and a new project, Futurise, which will start to take shape in the near soon.

The NEM.io Foundation were impressed with Cyberview’s Living Lab initiative to collaboratively promote an open innovation ecosystem to elevate Malaysia’s vibrant entrepreneurship to the next level and to propel Cyberjaya in achieving its vision of becoming the leading Global Tech Hub and recognized as a premier smart city in this region.

One of the startups powered by the NEM blockchain technology was LuxTag.io which is part of the Cyberview Living Lab Accelerator as well. Startups within the co-working space had the opportunity to engage with the NEM team with a few potential application underway.

The accelerator is a collaborative effort between government, corporates, entrepreneurs and investors to accelerate and nurture Blockchain, FinTech and IoT focused startups. It is a network-driven enabler for startups which aim at transforming the conventional approach to smart city development by embracing digital advancement with a scalable business model.

It is different from other conventional accelerators as it is an implementation enabler with a focus in customizing solutions to advance startups to the next level. In the early stage, a huge amount of time will be spent in understanding the needs of the startups. Here, a crafted and customized solution will be offered to each of the startup through a series of relevant workshops, networking sessions, value added services and power-packed advisory sessions.

In addition, one of the key focuses is to enable the startups to implement their innovation solutions in Cyberjaya and it will be done through strategic partnership with government, corporates, institutions, city councils and the residents.

 Overall, as NEM’s Blockchain Centre launches at the end of 2017, Cyberview will continue to explore partnership opportunities in using NEM’s blockchain technology in future initiative to develop a global tech hub in Malaysia at Cyberjaya.