GEORGE TOWN, Oct 11 – The official launching of Penang Accelerator for Creative, Analytics & Technology (@CAT) was held on Saturday at Wisma Yeap Chor Ee with present of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng. The launching of @CAT is to further promote of the creative ad technology startups entrepreneurship as the other new engine of growth for Penang and rejuvenate George Town Heritage as a startups zone.
In the meanwhile, Penang State Government via InvestPenang and Penang Development Corporation (PDC) also announced on Saturday that a pilot program called “Penang Accelerator for Creative, Analytics & Technology (@CAT)” at Wisma Yea Chor Ee (WYVE).
Penang Chief Minister said this unique colonial heritage venue us the new home where the tech community in Penang can unleash the inspiration, technological aspirations and creative of the talents. He said during official launching of Penang Accelerator for Creative, Analytics & Technology (@CAT).
“Since @CAT is going to be another prominent initiative in Penang, we decided to house this programme in one of the elegant historic building within the George Town’s heritage enclave at WYCE. WYCE, leased out by Wawasan Open University to PDC on 29th June 2014 for 30 years at a cost of over RM14 million which is RM40,402 per month,” said Lim.
Besides that, it also has successfully realized part of the state government’s dream in promoting science and technology and creative animation cluster. In addition, the restoration costs, to be financed by PDC works out to be RM5 million. Penang @CAT will be located at level 3, Creative Animation Triggers project at Level 2 and Level 1 will be leased to Penang Science Cluster,” he said.
“@CAT at WYCE will be the heart of Penang’s tech start up ecosystem where the Penang State government’s enterprising plan is to boost the local tech sector and to bring the state’s many players under one roof. Meanwhile, @CAT also aims to accelerate the establishment and growth of creative and technology based startup companies, to nurture new talents in the new sunrise fields of cloud computing, applications technology, Big Data Analytics (BDA) and Internet of Things (IoT),” he said.
Lim siad he believe that the developing of the state’s talented young people to move up the value chain and promote new creative ideas and innovative technology is the priority of the day. Besides that, Lim also announce some of the lineups of our upcoming @CAT Accelerator Programmes and community events for this year as below:
- Startup Weekend George Town – 16th Oct to 18th Oct 2015
- IoT Accelerator Lite – 23rd November to 4th December 2015 (Co-organized by MDeC, @CAT & TE4P), which I believe Dato’ Ng Wan Peng will share further during her session
- Pre Start-up Program – 2nd week of December 2015
- Founder Institute (Penang Chapter) on startups trainings – 8th March to 24th May 2016, which will also be shared further by Mr. Chan
He added that as for the supply of talent for start-up company goes, Penang has already started with the ‘Coding Shophouse’ programme early June this year while this programme will an initiative by Mr Douglas Khoo an entrepreneur himself which is aimed at providing opportunities to Penang’s tech and non tech community in learning programming and improving career marketability.
“As a start, there were also 15 students have already graduated from the 3-months first batch course which focused on ‘Ruby on Rails’, a web application framework. Lastly, I hope that with the Penang @CAT programme in place, we would be able to increase the number of successful startups originating and developing from Penang,” said Lim.
Lim added that in this launching of @CAT, they are also proud to announce our Penang @CAT official website, www.acatpenang.com, tailored for the general public especially startups entrepreneurs which contain information on accelerator programme, tech events, co-working space etc.
