Rebranded fund to benefit more business owners

The Selangor micro entrepreneur fund has been rebranded as Selangor Entrepreneur Madani Fund (DUMS).

Grants will no longer be limited to micro entrepreneurs with yearly income of below RM300,000.

Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari said the new application requirements were simple.

“If you have a micro, small or medium-sized business that has been operating in this state for at least two years and it is registered with Companies Commission of Malaysia, you can apply for a grant of up to RM30,000.”

He said eligibility included having been a resident in Selangor for at least 10 years.

He was speaking at the launch of the rebranded fund in Shah Alam, which was also attended by state youth, sports and entrepreneur committee chairman Mohd Najwan Halimi.

Amirudin said a yearly budget of RM2mil had been established for the fund, adding that so far the most number of applicants received in a year was 145.

“Entrepreneurs involved in sewing and selling food products made up a majority of the applicants in the past, but now we are eager to focus more on those from the multimedia, arts and cultural heritage fields,” he said.

Mohd Najwan said that among the enterprises that met with success under the programme was Nims, a company that sold chocolate-covered cereal.

Another is Qidot Cafe that started as a small cafe in Sijangkang in 2016 and expanded into packaged food like hot chocolate and white coffee.

At the event, DUMS recipient Nor Ashikin Khalid, 40, said the RM30,000 grant she received a month ago was a boon to her 20-year-old kuih bangkit business that she inherited from her mother Sirom Maarof, 74.

“I used the grant to buy a biscuit-making machine, which is going to double my production from 25kg to 50kg a day.

“In the past, when I made my kuih bangkit by hand, I was only able to earn about RM7,000 a year,” said the mother of three.

Nor Ashikin said before receiving the grant, her bakery in Teluk Gong, Klang, was visited by officials from the district land office to ascertain if she was eligible.

“The whole process took about a year before I received my grant,” she said. — By GRACE CHEN