McKinsey strengthens its digital and design capabilities in Asia with the acquihire of KL-based VLT Labs

McKinsey & Company  announced that it has acquired talent and assets from VLT Labs, a Malaysian digital business builder and product development studio based in Kuala Lumpur (KL). The announcement was made today at McKinsey’s inaugural Digital and Analytics Forum in KL, which attracted over 152 C-suite executives from 52 leading public and private sector organizations in Malaysia.

VLT Labs has over four years of digital product engineering and design experience, specializing in helping corporations to conceptualize, design and build digital products. VLT Labs’ talent will further boost McKinsey’s digital capabilities in Asia where demand is fast growing and with a view of helping local organizations become regional and global leaders in a digital age.

Commenting on the occasion, Michael Gryseels, Senior Partner and leader of McKinsey Digital Labs, APAC, said, “Successful digital reinvention starts with transforming the core of the business: the company’s value proposition as enabled by its people, processes, and technology. The process can start with building new businesses and launching pilots, but to get the full value from digital over time, companies must ultimately change the way they work. As our clients face rapid disruption of their businesses, we, too, have accelerated our pace of change to support them in their digital transformation journey. With Digital McKinsey, we have integrated our digital and design capabilities along with our strategy consulting services.”

(L-R): Nimal Manuel, Managing Partner, Malaysia, McKinsey & Company moderating the plenary session at the inaugural Digital and Analytics Forum on 19th Sept 2017 in Kuala Lumpur

Digital McKinsey brings together McKinsey’s expertise in technology, design, strategy, organization, and analytics to help clients reinvent themselves. Digital McKinsey has built, at a global and local level, an exemplary track record for business building and, for driving large scale digital transformations.

Celebrating the announcement and strengthened capabilities in Malaysia, Nimal Manuel, Managing Partner, Malaysia, McKinsey & Company said, “We are committed to growing a digital studio in Malaysia to serve our clients across the region. We are proud to have found exceptional talent in home-grown VLT Labs to help us achieve our mission. We look forward to integrating the team of designers, developers and product managers into McKinsey, taking them to serve our clients globally.”

VLT Labs will join the existing team within McKinsey Digital Labs which includes developers, designers, IT architects, agile coaches, and data engineering experts. The digital practitioners work side by side with client teams, not only for product delivery but also to help bring in new ways of working like agile methodology.

“We are very excited to be joining McKinsey. When we founded VLT Labs, all we had was a dream, and the passion to ‘build the companies of tomorrow’ by designing digital products and ventures. Joining McKinsey is a validation of our beliefs, values and model; as well as to continue our team’s journey on a global stage. This is a very special new chapter for us all.” said Andrew Tan, CEO and Co-Founder, VLT Labs.

McKinsey’s inaugural Digital and Analytics Forum in Malaysia is a key step towards a capability building effort in the country. Titled ‘McKinsey Innovation Forum: digitizing Malaysia’, it brought together esteemed CEOs who shared learnings on how to drive the digital and analytics breakthrough in Malaysia. The Forum also saw leading global experts of McKinsey come together to lead workshops on design thinking, big data and analytics, fintech, Industry 4.0, among other topics.

“Now is the time to deliver on Malaysia’s vision to grow into a global digital studio. Clients are more than ever seeing the need to build new capabilities within the digital and analytics space. By the end of this year, 30 percent of all our consultants in McKinsey’s Kuala Lumpur office will have this expertise. These domains bring new, more focused ways of impacting clients’ top and bottom lines and we are ready for the challenge.” concluded Manuel.

The year 2017 also marks McKinsey’s 20^th Anniversary in Malaysia. The firm is a key advisor to the country’s largest companies in all major sectors—including telecom, oil and gas, banking, energy, consumer goods, and healthcare.

About Digital McKinsey

Digital McKinsey brings together the best of McKinsey’s digital capabilities. Digital McKinsey not only advises but also builds, operates, and transfers capabilities to help our clients create value by reinventing the core of their businesses. We move projects quickly to prototype customer experiences, testing and refining them in the real world. We transfer digital knowledge to the client’s teams, to embed long-term capabilities. And all along the way, we work with clients to minimize risk. Globally we have over 2000 digital experts – including over 800 developers, designers, IT architects, agile coaches and data engineering experts – deeply committed to helping institutions in the private, public and social sectors achieve lasting success.

About McKinsey

McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm, deeply committed to helping institutions in the private, public, and social sectors achieve lasting success. For nine decades our primary objective has been to serve as our clients’ most trusted external adviser. With consultants in 110 locations in over 60 countries, across industries and functions, we bring unparalleled expertise to clients anywhere in the world. We work closely with teams at all levels of an organization to shape winning strategies, mobilize for change, build capabilities and drive successful execution.