MDEC names Raymond Siva CMO

The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) has promoted Raymond Siva (pictured) to the role of CMO, overlooking the 31-strong brand and strategic partnerships division. This includes brand marketing and partnerships, strategic communications, digital and experiential. In his new role, Siva will report to CEO Surina Shukri. He first joined MDEC in 2019 as senior advisor, communications and marketing.

Before taking on this role, he was the CEO of Edelman Indonesia for more than two years. According to his LinkedIn, he recruited 70% new talents from various specialisations as part of his efforts to transform the agency from a "loss making, traditional PR company" into a profitable integrated comms marketing firm in 18 months.

Before that, he was MD of Edelman Malaysia for more than five years, during which he also oversaw Zeno Malaysia. In that role, Siva had direct responsibility of P&L, brand marketing, as well as talent attraction and retention. He also worked at G2 Worldwide, OSK investment Bank, Desa Park City, Asian Media Network and World Asia Media.

Earlier this week, MDEC launched an open invitation seeking technology solution providers in the following digitalisation areas - digital marketing/sales, electronic point-of-sales system (e-POS), HR payroll system/CRM, procurement, and ERP/accounting and tax. The invitation closes on 24 January 5pm.

The SME business digitalisation grant was announced by the Ministry of Finance as part of Budget 2020 to support SMEs to adopt digitalisation measures for hteir operations. The government is offering a 50% matching grant of up to RM5,000 per company for the subscription of services such as e-POS, enterprise resource planning and electronic payroll system. The matching grant is worth RM500 million over five years, limited to the first 100,000 SMEs applying to upgrade their systems.