From Dropee to Borong
We started in 2017 with one observation: B2B trade in Malaysia runs on trust, relationships, and WhatsApp. That is not infrastructure. We set out to build the real thing.
A Note from Our Founder
We did not start Borong because we had a thesis about eProcurement software. We started because we watched Malaysian businesses, including our own early customers, spend enormous amounts of time and energy on something that should have been simple: buying the things they need to run their operations. Phone calls to confirm prices. WhatsApp messages to chase deliveries. Spreadsheets that no one trusted. We thought we could build something better. I still think that every day.
What We Saw in 2017
B2B trade in Malaysia was, and in many places still is, managed almost entirely through personal relationships. A procurement manager would call the same five suppliers they had always called, get verbal quotes, and place orders over WhatsApp. The invoice would arrive on paper. The price they paid had no connection to any market rate they could verify.
For SMEs, this meant paying more because they lacked the volume to negotiate. For larger organisations, it meant having no visibility over what their departments were actually spending, or whether the prices being paid bore any relationship to what others in the market were paying.
There was no neutral infrastructure in the middle. No platform that connected buyers to a verified supplier network, enforced contract pricing, and gave someone a dashboard showing total spend across the organisation. That gap is what Borong was built to fill.
Founded as Dropee
We incorporated in Kuala Lumpur with a simple proposition: give Malaysian SMEs a faster, fairer way to buy from wholesale suppliers. The first version was not complicated - a catalogue of verified suppliers and a way to browse and order. The hard part was trust: getting the first hundred suppliers onto the platform, then the first enterprise buyer willing to bet on a marketplace they had never heard of.
Accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2020 cohort
Dropee was one of only a small number of Malaysian companies selected for the programme that year. YC was not just capital. It was a forcing function: a demand to get specific about the problem, the customer and the unit economics, and an introduction to a global network of founders who understood what infrastructure businesses take to build.
Selected into Forbes Asia 100 To Watch
Forbes Asia recognised Dropee as one of the 100 companies to watch across Asia, the first signal from outside Malaysia that what we were building mattered beyond our immediate market. Enterprise buyers had started arriving, and they brought a different set of requirements: approval workflows, ERP connections, audit trails, compliance controls. B2B procurement was not one problem but many. SMEs needed discovery and trust; enterprises wanted procurement software, not just a catalogue.
Read the coverage
Closed Series A: USD 7M
We closed a USD 7M Series A round led by Vynn Capital, with participation from existing investors. The capital gave us the runway to build it properly: the ERP integration layer, the workflow engine, the compliance infrastructure larger organisations require, and the early version of what would become MIDAS - the price benchmarking and spend intelligence product that is now one of the platform's core differentiators.
Read the announcement
Dropee becomes Borong
By late 2023 we had built something that served both ends of the market on a single platform, and that gave us the confidence to rename the company. Borong is the word Malaysians use for buying in volume, from the source, at fair terms. The name reflects what the platform does and who it was built for - not just SMEs buying from suppliers, but the entire B2B trade infrastructure of the country.
Enterprise and GLC expansion
Enterprise and GLC clients came onto the platform in volume, among them Salaam Market with Maybank Islamic, unveiled by the Prime Minister as Malaysia's first B2B halal marketplace. MIDAS moved from pilot to core product, and Borong Credit grew into a meaningful financing business backed by RM1.1B in credit facilities from banking partners.
Ranked No. 2 in Asia-Pacific by Financial Times
The Financial Times ranked Borong the second fastest-growing company across the Asia-Pacific region in their annual ranking of high-growth companies.
Ranked No. 1 in Asia-Pacific by Financial Times
The FT No. 1 ranking in 2026 landed at a moment when the company is in the middle of some of its most significant work. Enterprise deployments that were in pilot stages in 2025 are now live at scale. The platform is processing more transaction value than at any point in the company's history.
The direction from here is clear: deeper ERP integration across the enterprise client base and the continued build-out of MIDAS as the price intelligence layer that sits across all of it.
View the FT 2026 ranking
We are not done. Not close.
B2B trade in Malaysia generates hundreds of billions of ringgit in annual transaction value. Most of it still moves through processes that have not fundamentally changed in decades. The infrastructure to manage it properly - approved vendor lists, price benchmarking, ERP-connected purchase orders, embedded financing - is what Borong is building.
Borong operates under Macro Tech Ventures Sdn Bhd (1190627-U), registered in Malaysia and headquartered at Suites 13.02, Level 13, Menara IGB, Mid Valley City, Kuala Lumpur.
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