KUALA LUMPUR: SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp) aims to harness 10 local drone companies by year-end, to add to the existing 15 in the local drone industry.
Chief executive officer, Noor Azmi Mat Said said SME Corp wants to turn Malaysia into a drone hub for Southeast Asia.
“We are looking at small and medium enterprises’ assistance through High Impact Programmes 2 (HIP 2) which aims to bridge research to market, providing solutions to market,” he told reporters here Monday.
According to him, SME Corp is looking at such segment and 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 HIP 2 has a fund allocation of RM5 million for disbursement to several industries.
However, 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 said.
For example, he said, the organisation received proposals on using drones equipped with thermal camera and facial recognition to trace people on the ground, to know whether there is a rise in their body temperature, and the drone will alert and capture the person’s image.
Noor Azmi said border monitoring and surveillance sectors would benefit the most from drones, which are commonly used in the oil and gas as well as the agriculture sector.
“We want to bring our small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to look at those areas,” he said, adding that drones are even utilised in flood warning situations for collecting data and producing weather forecasts.
He noted that other agencies were also making efforts to spur the drone industry.
With regard to HIP 1, he said it concerned 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, disclosed Noor Azmi.
GDCKL2020 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. –Bernama
