Cyberjaya Part 1

Monday, May 19, 2014

The story of Cyberjaya started in 1995 when the Federal Government commissioned a study for the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Malaysia to the management consultancy firm McKinsey. The consultancy firm proposed to create an Information Technology or IT-themed hub (Cyberjaya) to become The Malaysian IT Research and Development (R&D) centre right at the west side of Putrajaya, the new Malaysian Administration Centre.

Since then, the newly born IT City has seen a number of ups and downs that started in 1997 with the global financial crisis and continued in the first decade of 2000 through all the minor and major crises that globalisation brought over to Malaysia.

As I emphasise when talking about properties, one should always look at the sustainability of the location before making an investment decision. Cyberjaya has a strong strategic sustainability that lies in its Cyber or IT Malaysian capital concept.

As a matter of fact, even though Cyberjaya has stepped onto the property stage only a few years ago, since early 2000, Government agencies have been promoting Cyberjaya internationally. At the end of 2013, there were more than 500 MSC status corporations that have located their headquarters, IT centres and operation offices in Cyberjaya.

Some of the corporation giants we have now in Cyberjaya, Dell, HP, DhL, Motorola, OCBC, IBM and so on. IT means innovation, and there cannot be innovation without education. Cyberjaya has also become the educational hub of central Malaysia with many local and international universities which have based their campuses there. The latest statistics indicate that the student population has already passed the 25,000 head count and is in fact, on the rise.

As New York in the 70’s has been nicknamed the “Big Apple”, Cyberjaya is increasingly becoming known as the “C” city of South east Asia.

Why “C” you will ask? C means computers, cyber-science and of course Cyberjaya. Other C’s in relation to property, could stand for: Clean hub, centralised location, capital of creativity, connectivity and last but not least capital gains.