Serial founder Ashran Ghazi exits Dattel, takes up his second CEO stint in a govt agency at MRANTI

Fortunately this time it was different. The MRANTI board were involved in the selection process to appoint Ashran Ghazi (pic), a respected serial founder and former CEO of MaGIC (Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre) as its next CEO, with Ashran topping a number of candidates, both internal and external, considered by the board, with the Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation signing off on the board's choice. Ashran signed the offer letter last Fri for a two plus one-year contract and clocked in today to work, wasting no time in hosting his first town hall as well.

He takes over from Rais Hussin, who served a short two-year term from Oct 2023 to Sept 2025. The board only found out about that appointment when the news was leaked by the media before an official announcement. “People were asking me, ‘how could you?’” recalled a board member. That remark was related to the tempestuous two-year stint Rais had as non-executive chairman at Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation from 2020 to 2022 where he was widely seen as acting in an executive role instead of advising, supporting MDEC leadership.

His response, when asked about overstepping his role back then? “I am not here to be a curry puff chairman.” (meaning he wasn’t in the role to lean back enjoy the perks)

Yet one member of MDEC’s then senior leadership team said, “He does not know how to run a government agency and his interference was ridiculous.”

Be that as it may, there were enough people who felt Rais had done a good job while at MDEC that he then got the MRANTI role, this time as CEO and for a two-year contract, not the standard two plus one.

This ruffled some board members who felt the head of the country’s main innovation agency cannot be expected to move a nation’s innovation needle when on such a short contract.

While not happy, the board could not do anything about it with Rais telling the board on his first day that his key mandate from the Prime Minister was to tighten governance and get the innovation agenda on track.

So how has Rais done in his short tenure?

He promised “exciting and sexy” developments to come during a media briefing in March 2024. But one will be hard pressed to find any interesting developments out of MRANTI over the past two years, much less sexy.

The sexy announcements could have been over the news that two of the world’s top cloud services players have leased land in MRANTI to build their data centres. But the companies did not allow MRANTI to reveal the deals.

According to an executive in the know, these were back-up sites for the cloud giants main sites in Malaysia and they typically do not reveal public details.

And while he announced that MRANTI had been appointed to facilitate addressing food security (a hot button issue for Rais) with the country’s 2023 food bill at around RM72 billion, “so we are working very very hard in this area,” no news has come out on meaningful progress.

That is if one defines news as information shared via media outlets. But this past Aug, MRANTI shared news on its social media channels of a MoA with an Indian NGO well regarded for its work on mechanized rice farming, Praanadhaara, to pilot 4IR-driven, mechanised rice farming over 500 acres in Kuala Penyu, Sabah, as a proof-of-concept. The Department of Agriculture, Sabah is a partner. This is part of a broader Malaysia–India collaboration on climate-smart rice cultivation and food security.

The manner in which the MoA was announced is another sticking point with some board members. “We are doing 101 things but there are no external communications of our work,” said a frustrated board member.  

It took 18-months for the POC to be formalised, reinforcing the MRANTI board’s point about the too short tenure of Rais’ role to make any meaningful progress. It is not clear if Ashran shares Rais’ sense of urgency over food security and specifically if MRANTI should be involved.

As for Rais, it is time to slow down and focus on more personal things. “After two years of laborious never ending work in transforming the tech park, I am now enjoying some time with my family, complete writing my book and equipping myself more in facing the fast changing dynamics of the world. When the time is right, I will comment on my future.” A passionate die-hard Liverpool football club supporter, he added, “For now I hope Slot (the current Liverpool manager) will be replaced with (Jurgen) Klopp or (Oliver) Glasner.”

Expectations of Ashran - work hard, run fast

As for Ashran, DNA has learnt that the board, even though they had no role in his hiring, are enthused by his track record as a serial entrepreneur and previous CEO of MaGIC from May 2016 to Jan 2019. He was a co-founder and CEO of consumer insights startup, Dattel from Jan 2019 and DNA has learnt that he has recently sold his stake which allowed him to be eligible to apply for the MRANTI job.

While his first formal meeting with the board will happen sometime this week, he has met with them individually before coming on board.

Expectations of him are to improve communications with the government as it was felt that Rais, who often sent members of his senior leadership team for various government or Mosti meetings, rather than attend himself, had caused some strain.

Giving his side of the story, Rais tells DNA, “I attended many post-cabinet meetings. And at times I send different SLTs as part of their in-house training as I was focused on cleaning up (MRANTI), building systems and reserves. The post-cabinet is more debriefing and information sharing that is easily done by sharing of meeting notes.”

Ashran will also need to focus on Phase 2 of the MRANTI Master Plan - the “Innovation Gateway” build-out – turning the older TPM facilities into a proper 4IR-ready office/R&D district with world-class digital infrastructure and tenants, while retaining universities and anchor institutions around it. The role and expectations are a far cry from his MaGIC experience where he worked to build the startup ecosystem, focusing on small startups and not having to close any sales, which he will have to do at MRANTI, which has 686 acres of land, which he has to monetise by bringing in world class companies to locate their innovation centres there while overseeing the development of MRANTI into an “integrated AI Park” that aligns with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Meanwhile MRANTI tenants welcomed Ashran’s appointment with one major tenant saying that MRANTI has been outbound rather than inbound for any developments towards talent development, R&D, startup or tech incubation.

“There isn't an official community forum for MRANTI tenants where B2B and B2C interactions can happen for talent to flow between the many enterprises here.”

A founder who is a long-time tenant at MRANTI hoped Ashran would go to the ground to understand the challenges of the tenants specifically the startsups and SMEs.  "He should look into reducing the rental rate to attract more startups/SMEs since there’s no more MSC status for MRANTI for it to justify charging a high rental. Otherwise, they’ll only fill the park with large entities which would not contribute to the vision of MRANTI." He also hoped for the park to be rejuvenated and become lively again.

Another founder welcomed having a fellow founder as the CEO. “As a national tech and innovation park, MRANTI shouldn’t behave in a tenant–landlord model. The functions as an inclusive innovation platform should be strengthened. Potential tenants shouldn't be asking why they should relocate to MRANTI (which is the case most of the time!) and existing ones should find a strong value that they don't consider relocating out.”

He believes that with MRANTI’s advantage of being the buildings and infrastructure owner; it should turn itself into a real-world testing ground for sandboxes, living labs, POCs. “There have been some of this done but this has to be done more aggressively.”

Indeed going by the MRANTI Master Plan that was launched in Oct 2022, Ashran has to move aggressively to hit the target set by then minister of Mosti, Adham Baba, who said that the execution of the Master Plan will help improve Malaysia’s position in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Global Innovation Index (GII) where Malaysia currently sits in the 34th spot. This is a mere improvement of two spots over the 2022 ranking, signifying the task of the challenge ahead for Ashran. Mosti’s goal is to make Malaysia among the Top 20 ranked countries in the GII by 2030.

Ashran will certainly have his plate full running to meet this target.