Going where the talent exists, US firm puts spotlight on Malaysia

 

Accion Labs CEO Kinesh Doshi says his company can draw talent to Malaysia.

PETALING JAYA: With over a decade of experience in the digital technology sector, US-based Accion Labs now seeks to draw the global business community’s attention to Malaysia.

In an interview with FMT, the company’s CEO, Kinesh Doshi, said he believed that Accion Labs could draw international demand to Malaysia, thus creating jobs here, citing its more than 10 years of experience in emerging technologies.

He said they had customers across the globe who were willing to go where talent in digital technology exists.

“We bring a lot of experience that others don’t have. With the appropriate investments, we can train a lot of people in the local economy.

“But we can also connect Malaysia to our global talent pool and bring international talent to Malaysia. And, because of our experience, we could digitise more and more companies in Malaysia, hopefully creating more downstream impact.”

Accion Labs founders Kinesh Doshi, Sandesh Sukumaran and Tony Kernan. (Accion Labs pic)

Kinesh said the firm was seeing greater traction in convincing its Europe and US customers to set up a base of operations in Malaysia.

“Malaysia is a hotbed of diverse culture. There are so many amazing places like Kuala Lumpur, Penang and others that can draw overseas talent,” he said.

Kinesh and his partners Sandesh Sukumaran and Tony Kernan founded Accion Labs in 2011. The company has been active in Malaysia for the past five years, and Kinesh cited the untapped talent in Malaysia as a major reason for coming here.

He said Malaysia had a welcoming immigration policy compared to some of the other countries in the region, while good infrastructure and English-speaking people were also plus points for the company.

While the pandemic meant that business hit a brief snag, the firm was now “going fast in Malaysia” with an expanded leadership team and with support from government agencies such as Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC)

Kinesh said the firm strived to create a unified global culture regardless of where its office was located, as he believed the current economy was a global one, or what he called a “Facebook economy”.

For Accion Labs, this translated into a unified culture of work-life harmony where they strived to ensure that employees had a balance between their commitments to work and family, among others.

“Having that unified cultural point has been one big reason for our success and growth,” said Kinesh, a native of Delhi, India, who now lives in Florida.

In just over 10 years, Accion Labs has managed to establish itself as a globally sought-after digital and innovation engineering firm.

In recounting the firm’s journey, Kinesh narrowed down Accion Labs’ swift progress in the US to three key factors.

He said their focus on emerging technologies meant that they were in a segment that had been in high demand for the last 10 years. As most national leaders in the US had spent time in the tech sector, the company was able to gather a large portfolio of connections and access to a solid customer base.

But the third reason, which Kinesh attributed as the company’s biggest differentiator, was that Accion Labs learned very early on that this market was not demand-driven, and was, instead, based on supply.

“A lot of companies have access to buyers. But what they couldn’t figure out was how to create a model where you can spark and produce talent, hire them, onboard them, and also retain talent.

“So we created an organisation that had the ability to find good talent, onboard them, and retain that talent. That means we need to keep them motivated and excited.

“We started with the US, then opened offices in India, Singapore, Malaysia, and now we’re in the Philippines, Romania and Mexico. We went where supply and talent existed, and that allowed us to grow.” - FMT