GIFT: Upskilling Malaysia’s Young Tech Talent for a High-Wage Future

The Obstacle

Malaysia has made enormous strides since independence, emerging as a regional industrial and manufacturing leader. But as the country enters a new economic era, the need to rethink the foundations of growth has become more urgent.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Ekonomi MADANI vision articulates a path forward—one that seeks to raise not only the ceiling for economic complexity and innovation but also the floor for wages, skills, and opportunity. A critical pillar of this vision is human capital: empowering Malaysia’s people—across all segments of the population—to become a magnet for investment in high-value industries.

Despite a strong pipeline of graduates from TVET institutions, Malaysia faces an underemployment challenge. While the nation does not suffer from a lack of jobs per se, many young people—particularly TVET graduates—find themselves in roles that do not match their training or potential.

With surveys revealing that nearly 90% of TVET graduates were earning less than RM2,000 per month, with many working in positions that neither leveraged their credentials nor offered a pathway to advancement, Malaysian employers were voicing concerns about a shortage of industry-ready technical talent. The gap between education and employment was growing—and with it, the risk of wasted potential and lost competitiveness.

This was the challenge at the heart of GIFT: how to build a bridge between Malaysia’s ambitious economic agenda and the latent talent of its young workforce.

Our Approach

Khazanah Nasional Berhad and BCG came together to design GIFT as an integrated national solution to the underemployment challenge. Drawing on Khazanah’s mandate and reach, along with BCG’s strategic and educational expertise, the team set out to not only pilot a program, but also embed a scalable model for systemic change.

The approach rested on three interlocking engines—skilling, matching, and funding—with each designed to address a core friction in the graduate-to-employment pipeline.

• Engine 1 – Skilling. This engine is focused on building an industry-aligned curriculum that elevates soft skills, communication, and problem-solving abilities, alongside technical proficiency. A dedicated GIFT Academy was established to deliver immersive training programs tailored to technical job tracks, including capstone projects designed to simulate real-world work environments.
• Engine 2 – Matching. Addressing the disconnect between employers and talent, and by partnering with top employers in Malaysia’s growing tech and industrial ecosystem, GIFT created a job-matching mechanism that fast-tracks qualified graduates into roles with strong salary and growth prospects. Employer partnerships ensure that the training is demand-driven and not just academically rigorous.
• Engine 3 – Funding. This engine ensures that the model will be sustainable beyond its pilot phase. The team built a hybrid model drawing on both public and private resources, with the long-term goal of embedding GIFT into the national upskilling ecosystem.

From the outset, GIFT was designed as a collaborative solution. While led by Khazanah and BCG, it was structured to benefit and engage key government stakeholders, including the Ministries of Finance, Education, and Human Resources. Early in the pilot, GIFT modules began to be embedded into academic curricula, and institutional trainers were upskilled to deliver the content directly—ensuring that the model could scale sustainably.

What began as a targeted intervention became a proof point for how cross-sector collaboration could yield systemic impact.

The Result

Less than six months after the launch of its first cohort, GIFT began to deliver measurable results. More than 300 students were trained during the pilot, showing marked improvements in the very capabilities that had previously been seen as gaps: communication, critical thinking, and professional resilience.

Students reported increased self-confidence and a greater sense of agency in navigating the workforce. Employers, in turn, began to view TVET talent through a new lens: not as fallback hires, but rather as high-potential contributors to Malaysia’s innovation agenda. The results have been positive:

• Graduates from the pilot cohort have begun securing roles in high-demand sectors with salaries measurably higher than the national average for TVET alumni—helping to challenge long-standing stigma and signal clear value to employers.
• As of October 2025, 1,100 students had been enrolled into GIFT nationwide, with a 70% successful placement rate at a significantly higher average wage.
• Institutions have begun adopting GIFT modules into their standard curricula, while trainers and faculty are being equipped to deliver the program sustainably, turning a pilot into a replicable national model.
• GIFT has been positioned as a scalable solution that stands to benefit key ministries as they pursue broader national goals around workforce transformation and economic growth.

Perhaps most importantly, GIFT has proven that a well-designed pilot—grounded in deep collaboration and executed with rigor—could seed a national solution. Its curriculum, employer network, and funding framework are now forming the basis for expansion across institutions, with the longer-term vision of embedding GIFT into Malaysia’s national upskilling system.

As GIFT continues to align with national development priorities, its relevance and resilience are growing. With strengthened institutional partnerships and clear alignment to national goals, GIFT is showing early promise as a model for how inclusive, skills-first strategies can support Malaysia’s future economy.