After 27 years in Malaysia’s startup trenches, Sivapalan bets on profitability over hypergrowth with Cypress Drive Ventures
- ID
- 33307
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 09 Oct 2026, 12:45 AM
- Fetched
- 09 Oct 2026, 1:20 AM
- Provider
- Digital News Asia
- Category
- malaysia-tech
- Original URL
- https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/startups/after-27-years-malaysias-startup-trenches-sivapalan-bets-profitability-over-hypergrowth
- Source URL
- https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/rss.xml
Summary
- Score
- 6.0
- Created
- 09 Oct 2026, 1:21 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_foundersstartup_founders
What happened
Digital News Asia profiles Dr Sivapalan Vivekarajah launching Cypress Drive Ventures Sdn Bhd, a new RM50m venture fund managed by Cypress Asia Sdn Bhd, with New Hoong Fatt Holdings Bhd as anchor LP committing RM20m and Xelia Tong as co-founder. The fund says it will back profitable startups with IPOs—not quick flips—as the end game, after Sivapalan’s 2025 rejection from Jelawang Capital’s Emerging Fund Managers Programme. The piece also notes his 27 years in Malaysia’s startup ecosystem, over 50 startup investments, TeAM/MBAN roles, and a 2019 government task force on startup funding architecture.
Why it matters
For Malaysian or SEA founders planning to raise, this adds a RM50m profitability-first fund to target and suggests pitching revenue/profitability plus a credible IPO path rather than hypergrowth-only or quick-flip framing. The RM20m anchor from an old-economy LP and the fund’s size mean it likely will not be a broad, high-volume check-writer, so do not treat it as a general funding thaw.
Discussion angle
What should a Malaysian founder change in a pitch to a profitability-first fund like Cypress Drive versus a hypergrowth VC, and does a RM50m fund materially move the needle without clearer IPO exit paths?