MALAYSIA: Darawati Hussain, the chairman of the Malaysian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, has said that Islamic venture capital in the country is attracting strong interest from local and foreign investors.
“There is a significant amount of assets under Islamic finance like Sukuk and unit trusts; and [the] private equity asset class should be highly considered as another good investment product,” she said.
Currently, there are over RM1 billion (US$318.89 million)-worth of Islamic venture capital assets under management.Darawati also said that Islamic venture capital assets will help boost the local venture capital industry’s assets under management by 25% this year from RM5.4 billion (US$1.72 billion) currently.
“A lot of our members are going out to raise (private equity and venture capital) funds. In the next one or two years, you will see some new funds being launched and most of them will be Islamic structured because there is a lot of interest from Shariah-conscious investors to deploy their money to this region,” she added.