Brainjam #10: Inside Khazanah's VC circus
How Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund turned into a cautionary tale.
Update: An earlier version of the newsletter had an error about Khazanah’s role and internet giant Grab. That has been fixed.
I have been writing about Khazanah Nasional for a while now that I decided to crunch a whole bunch of data I have — from 2019 to 2024 — to see what I could pick out for content.
Few organisations have experienced such violent strategic whiplash as Khazanah in the annals of Malaysian institutional memory. Its VC adventures are not spared either.
Good news is I have enough for a series. So this is the first one. My so-called Khazanah files (laughs).
Today’s Brainjam takes a look at Khazanah’s VC performance through the lens of its three most recent MDs: Azman Mokhtar (2004-2018), Shahril Ridza Ridzuan (2018-2021) and Amirul Feisal (2021-present).
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The key thing to note, when it comes to dissecting Khazanah, is that the sovereign wealth fund is governed by a board with the prime minister as chairman.
How Khazanah reacts is a reflection of policy priorities at an executive level.
For specialist work like VC investments, the Khazanah managing director (MD) typically proposes the high-level strategy to the board for approval.
While each MD promised transformation, each delivered different results with varying degrees of successes and failures.