eGlobal ramps up M'sia operations
Chief executive officer and co-founder Don Saunders said the company would leverage the relative cost advantage, good business practices and good talent from its operations in Malaysia.
"Malaysia is our strong base providing back office functions, human resource and financial services to our customers and we intend to capitalize on these unique capabilities," he told Malaysia.CNET.com in a phone interview.
The office here, he added, is likely to become eGlobal's second largest after Singapore, at 40 employees by year-end from its current 22. The company presently has 143 staff from its 10 offices in Asia Pacific.
"Region-wide, we expect to increase this to 260 by year-end," said Saunders.
eGlobal's plans are mainly supported by its recent first round funding of RM53.2 million secured from three venture capital firms.
Leading the pack was US-based Worldview Technology Partners with RM38 million, followed by Singapore Telecom's venture capital arm SingTel Ventures with RM9.5 million, and Hong Kong-based Total E-commerce Ltd (TotalEcom) who gave RM5.7 million.
Declining to disclose the percentage of funds allocated for Malaysia, Saunders would only say it is a significant amount.
"There will be substantial amounts pumped primarily into Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea."
Beginning operations in January this year, eGlobal advises, services and forms joint-ventures with enterprise software companies initiating operations in the Asia Pacific region.
Simply put, instead of companies building a direct presence from scratch--which could take substantial time and effort--eGlobal acts as if it were the company bringing the latter's products and services to customers in Asia Pacific.
"Traditionally, software firms could not invest in Asia Pacific until they reach a large scale in North America and Europe. We provide them with the ability to keep their focus on their home markets while leveraging our local delivery expertise as well as sharing the investment and minimizing the operational risks," said Saunders.
Its list of partners include Active Software, ICSA.net, Sagent and Quintus. Its customers include Maxis Communications Bhd in Malaysia and SingTel.