vritimesKUALA LUMPUR – 3 September 2026
LapaLabs today announced the Malaysia launch of Solve (https://lapalabs.co/solve/), a free marketplace that matches companies with real problems to universities and students who solve them with a distinctive new layer: Solve now surfaces the government grants and incentives that can fund the work on both sides.
Solve’s model is simple: a company describes a challenge in its own words, or with documents and the inbuilt AI writer shapes it into a clear brief. Universities and their students take it on as capstone projects, theses, labs and research collaborations. The matching is free, and whatever happens after a presentation is entirely up to the two parties.
Solve now connects both companies and institutions to the grant landscape that can fund those projects, such as
• PPRN 2.0 (KPT) — the Public-Private Research Network, which co-funds a company’s real science-and-technology problem solved by a university research team, with grant awards of up to RM350,000 per project depending on company size.
• GET (KPT) — Malaysia’s Exploratory & Transformative Research Grant, which now requires researchers to secure an industry collaboration letter before applying for awards of up to RM250,000. Solve is where those researchers and companies can find each other.
• HRD Corp levy schemes — letting registered employers put their existing levy contributions toward structured training, including student placements under the Industrial Training Scheme.
• TalentCorp incentives (LiKES and MySIP) — co-funding SME intern allowances and offering a double tax deduction on qualifying student stipends.
“We built Solve to reduce the friction between talent and industry. A company’s problem shouldn’t stall for lack of people or a clean path to work with a university. Solve is a hyper-focused, project-based internship: one real brief, AI-native students, a live stakeholder. These students are the pioneers of a new way of solutioning — and in Malaysia, the grant ecosystem exists to make that collaboration easier. said Firdaus Salim, CEO of LapaLabs.
Malaysian universities are required to maintain industry advisory councils and industry-linked programmes, creating strong demand for a pipeline of real company problems. Meanwhile, researchers seeking transformative research funding must show industry collaboration before they can apply. Solve sits precisely at that intersection, an open marketplace where companies with challenges, universities with researchers, and the grants that fund the work all meet.
Solve is a free initiative of LapaLabs (lapalabs.co), a Malaysia-based AI Native Edtech company.
The platform is open to companies of all sizes and institutions of higher learning across Malaysia and the region
Notes to Editors
• Grant details on the Solve site are drawn from publicly available programme guidelines. Prospective applicants should verify current terms and application windows with the respective agencies.
• Matching on Solve is free; LapaLabs does not charge companies or institutions for the service. You can access it through https://lapalabs.co/solve
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