- All eyes on Sam Shafie and Kashminder Singh as they build IEO
- Eye on P2P financing over mid term, synergies with other offerings
Unlike the quest for a digital bank licence in Malaysia, where there are no clear market favourites but feverish speculation, it was perhaps the worst kept secret in the fintech space that Pitch Platforms Sdn Bhd was an inevitable pick by the Securities Commission (SC) Malaysia as an operator for the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) platform it was slated to announce last month.
And so it was duly confirmed on 23 March via a media statement from the SC that it had appointed Pitch Platforms, which operates in the market as pitchIN, as one of two operators for the IEO platform, to promote responsible innovation in the digital assets space.
While Kapital DX Sdn Bhd is the second operator chosen, all eyes will be on pitchIN and its founders, the charismatic, football loving, never seen without his baseball cap, Sam Shafie, and former tech journalist cum publisher Kashminder Singh who launched the company almost 10 years ago, in June 2012, to see if they can replicate the stellar market success they have had in the equity crowdfunding (ECF) space in Malaysia.
Not shy to tout this success, back in March 2020 on the release of their 2019 performance, they had declared pitchIN to be “the leading regulated ECF platform in the entire Asia Pacific region.”
The best was yet to come however. Benefiting from the rapid digital adoption by businesses in the wake of the pandemic, in early Nov 2020 they hit another milestone –recording US$24.1 million (RM100 million) in total funds raised for companies in just that year.
The stage was set for the duo to dream bigger – beyond Malaysia and beyond ECF, even though there is still deep untapped opportunity in Malaysia’s ECF market.
“The upside is huge as there are nearly a million SMEs in Malaysia. We have assisted over 130 of them to raise funds, so it is clear that there’s a lot…
