Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak wants the bumiputera to emulate Asian American in their cooperation and trust in order to get a larger share of the economic pie.

Najib quoted economist Francis Fukuyama observation in his book 'Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order' on how the Asian American has much more trust in his business community than the African American and the former has managed to become more financially successful.

"What I am trying to say is that this time, other than the government's help, we (the bumiputera) need to help leverage between us if we want to see additional dimensions as one more impetus to the bumiputera's economy," he said.

He was speaking at the launch of 'Bahtera: The Bumiputernuers of Tomorrow' at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre today.

The Bahtera initiative aims to address the information gap and help 'bumipreneurs' to transform their ventures using business intelligence, marketing, and service delivery by harnessing the use of technology and new business models.

Bahtera also wants to bring together the private and public sector in building a stronger ecosystem to supporting bumiputera entrepreneurs.

Najib once again reminded the bumiputeras not to rely too heavily on the government to offer all sorts of assistance for them to succeed.

He however said that government would continue to provide the platform for them to succeed as  the country is in its final leg the year 2020.

As such, he said Bahtera would accomodate the ‘Big Data’ programme, which involved the Companies Commission of Malaysia and Teraju, among others, that would compile information on the businesses to streamline their networking.

This would allow the entrepreneurs to market their businesses, while fostering relationships in the supply chain.

"With this big data, we can get information which we can extend to the community of bumiputera enterpreneurs so that they can do marketing, create business contacts, support each other’s supply chain, and buy supplies from bumiputera companies.

“This way, we can create an additional market among the bumiputera companies,” he said.