I have had the opportunity to be interviewed by the esteemed Mr. Karamjit Singh, editor of NetV@lue earlier this month for their Week in Tech section of the Edge. Mr. Karamjit asked me pretty pertinent questions, of which I would like to share some of my thoughts here.
MDV has funded a total RM2.5billion to 279 ICT companies. In 2008 alone, MDV has approved slightly above RM1 billion, RM700 million of which we had already disbursed. For MDV's second fund, we have draw-down half a billion ringgit and RM300 million of that loan amount was already approved. RM200 million of the said amount has already been disbursed. 2nd MDV Fund is primarily for biotechnology areas and also some ICT related projects.
We are very proud to share some of our success stories of our clients. One company had an initial turnover of just RM1 million is rolling between RM10 to RM24 million in turnovers. A few of our client companies have been listed; like SCAN Associates. As a Development Facilitator, we also always provide continuing support to client companies. For example, we have had clients who received projects and contracts from the Government, such as e-Perolehan and projects for MAMPU. MDV provides support by creating a win-win situation where we approach the government to provide support to the client companies as we believe that the earlier the commercialisation of our client's products via adoptions by their clients, the earlier it is we would get our returns. We are now proud to report that the company has revolved from only RM100,000 transaction monthly to almost RM7 billion transaction per month.
On a promising note, we have since approved more than RM200 million for biotechnology related projects. We had only targeted for RM200 million so this I feel is an encouraging trend to note. We also noted that the current trends for our biotechnology funding tend to lean toward industrial biotechnology. I told Mr. Karamjit in the interview, and I am saying this again, I feel that there's a big pool of opportunity to tap in the area of industrial biotechnology, specifically, in the waste-to-wealth areas. I feel that this is a great area to go into as it is not just a virtually new area which gives huge opportunity. I also like the idea that it provides companies to be environmentally conscious and to re-use or limit its waste as much as possible. It must be noted here that MDV is likely to be the only financier to be funding biotechnology related projects, apart from government grants. This is no fault of the other banks, but each of the financial institutions has their own different roles, mandates and responsibilities to our own stakeholders. MDV owes our stakeholders to develop, nurture and provide financing to high-growth sectors which include both ICT and biotechnology.
To conclude, while I would not be the subject matter expert to predict whether the biotechnology industry can contribute to 5% of the GDP by 2020, but I do believe that we are moving towards that direction. Biotechnology is still at its infancy stage so this leaves much room for opportunity to grow and grow it will, with the right environment, assistance and nurturing from the government. It is the hope of MDV to be able to lend a hand in creating a robust industry for biotechnology.
