SME Digitalisation Malaysia FB Group

Just got reminded today about a very good initiative during MCO that got abused.

SME Digitalisation Matching Grant.

During that time, I started the SME Digitalisation Malaysia FB group. Mainly I felt it was a good time for SMEs to pick up their digitalisation effort during MCO.

For example, Work From Home / Remote Working / Digital Marketing and so forth.

I kept the group quite strict, to avoid it turning into a group that is without focus. Only digitalisation-related posts were allowed. Sometimes some PSA.

During that time, I saw a lot of posts promoting website / system / digitalisation services with 0 cost from clients. I was being alert, cause I am fully aware that the SME Digitalisation Grant is a matching grant with a maximum of RM 5k. Only applicable if the service is provided by MDEC/BSN endorsed TSP.

But why was I seeing posts that kept promoting as FREE, and clients don’t have to pay anything?

So I asked one of them. They thought I was a Lead. I noticed that a lot of them are resellers of some TSP. Explaining the method.

I forgot the details about how it is being done. But roughly, clients really pay 0 because they will do the paperwork. Then no actual transactions or they will refund back and so on. Or no need to pay full.

Then I noticed that usually, the pricing is out of standard pricing. It’s like the actual value of the system or product is usually just RM 2k. But they charge RM 10k for the services. To get the max of the SME Digitalisation Grant.

So basically, they are selling a service of maybe RM1k cost, that normally worth only RM2k, as a fake RM 10K project for the grant, then receive the RM5k max grant money, with clients paying RM 0, and bagging RM4k profit.

It was bad. Hence I stopped all those posts from getting through the group.

I was then in an MDEC event and I asked the question. Mentioning there’s this issue going around. The officer said yes, they are aware, and those who do so, if later being audited by BSN or MDEC, then they will be in trouble.

That didn’t happen. Due to MCO, and also the political landscape by then, I guess.

What did happen is a lot of clients got stuck with lousy services, half complete, or even in a hostage situation type of contract that is super sticky. Some even lost their domain name or website due to those PIC just ghosting them.

But one thing I’m glad about is that it seems like the new round of SME Digitalisation Grant is being better monitored. Seems like there’s more compliance.

But still, there are still issues of out-of-proportion pricing, to maximize the grant gain. Then also seems like quite a lot of cases of grants not getting through and services not being done properly and ghosting clients.

I also noticed the grant already hit the threshold, some TSP already stopped promoting. But a lot of others still keep it up. And in the end, clients ended up with no grant, paid an overly absurd price, and got a lousy result.

Just hope that there are more SME Digitalization Grants. But better controlled and with a better monitored and less exploitable process.

Checkout the FB group below. https://www.facebook.com/groups/smedigitalisation/