Private equity fund management company Ekuiti Nasional Bhd (Ekuinas) has bought a major stake in web host
Exabytes. Established in 2001, Exabytes has headquarters in Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. The company has cornered 30% of Malaysia’s hosting market and offers a broad range of hosting-related products and services. These include public and private cloud hosting, dedicated servers, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), SSL certificates, and domain name registration. It has over over 75,000 customers in over 120 countries. Exabytes’ focus is to enable SMEs to “grow their businesses online to achieve their dreams”. Ekuinas’ purchase is intended to enhance Exabytes’ presence in the services industry.
Ekuinas was established in 2009 and is a private equity company owned by the Malaysian government. With headquarters in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, Ekuinas manages around RM4.1 billion ($1 billion) in capital and has traditionally made investments in Malaysian companies in a number of sectors, including healthcare, education and oil and gas. Ekuinas’ stake in Exabytes represents 40% of the total value of the company. It has the option to increase its stake up to 54%.
“True to our mandate, we are investing in and nurturing high-potential local companies that are ready to scale and compete regionally, if not globally,” explained Syed Yasir Arafat, the CEO of Ekuinas. “Through Exabytes, Ekuinas will be able to capitalise on the booming internet economy globally, which is currently valued at US$3.5 trillion. Given its strong, experienced and founder-led senior management team, we are confident that Exabytes will continue on its growth trajectory with the global market for hosting expected to grow at 9% annually driven by increasing internet penetration and digitization of businesses,” he added.
“We will be leveraging on our brand premium, especially in Indonesia to drive customer acquisition through marketing and upselling higher value services, as well as expanding our capabilities and offerings into cloud and digital marketing to further beef up our end-to-end web solutions,” suggested Kee Siak Chan, the founder and CEO of Exabytes.
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