The Programme Turning Malaysia's Overlooked Youth Into Sales Professionals

Aida is 19 years old. Before joining the NextGen Sellers programme, she had already worked three jobs: nursery assistant, barista, and retail assistant. She was not lacking in experience or willingness. What she lacked was a pathway into the kind of career that builds over time, that offers progression, that treats her skills as assets rather than just labour.

She is exactly the person this programme was designed for.

Biji-biji Initiative, a Malaysian social enterprise, has launched the pilot phase of its NextGen Sellers programme in Kuala Lumpur, a workforce development initiative specifically targeting young Malaysians from B40 households aged between 18 and 24. Supported by the Citi Foundation through its Global Innovation Challenge, the programme places participants into six-month paid sales roles while surrounding them with structured training, mentorship, and financial support designed to remove the practical barriers that typically make entering the workforce so difficult for young people from lower-income backgrounds.

More Than a Training Course

The first thing worth understanding about NextGen Sellers is what it is not. It is not a short seminar. It is not a certificate programme that ends with a piece of paper and a handshake. It is, in the words of Ambika Sangaran, partner at Biji-biji Initiative and chief operating officer of Mereka, an ecosystem.

That word matters. The programme invests approximately RM15,000 per participant, a figure that reflects the genuine cost of doing this properly. Each participant receives a monthly allowance of RM1,800 for the full six months, a laptop, transportation support, and social security coverage through PERKESO. On the training side, they work through sales skills, workplace English, financial management, artificial intelligence tools, and professional mentorship. Employer partners include Voltek Energy, Kidocode Malaysia, and Telecontinent. Learning partners include UiTM Akademi Pengajian Bahasa and FINCO. Government-linked organisations PERKESO, FELDA, MyFutureJobs, and AAPGM-SDG are also part of the structure.

This is not one organisation trying to solve a complex problem alone. It is a coordinated effort across sectors, which is precisely the kind of approach that the problem demands.

The Structural Gap Nobody Talks About Enough

Here is something that often goes unacknowledged in conversations about youth unemployment in Malaysia: many young people from B40 households already have entrepreneurial skills. They sell things online. They run informal businesses. They negotiate, manage inventory, handle customers, and solve problems often without any formal training at all.

The issue, as FutureLab.my chief executive Brian Tan points out, is that these capabilities are frequently invisible to conventional hiring processes. A corporate recruiter looking at a resume does not always know how to read the experience of someone who built a side business selling on Shopee or who managed a family's small trading operation. The skills are real. The recognition is not there.

NextGen Sellers is, among other things, an attempt to bridge that gap to take capabilities that already exist and translate them into professional contexts where they can be recognised, rewarded, and built upon.

Why the Citi Foundation Is Involved

The Citi Foundation's Global Innovation Challenge backs community organisations developing solutions to social and economic challenges faced by low-income communities. Its involvement here reflects a broader philosophy: that philanthropic funding, deployed thoughtfully, can help test and scale models that government and the private sector alone might not attempt.

Vikram Singh, Citi's country officer and banking head for Malaysia, framed it in terms of Malaysia's own national aspirations, raising both the floor and the ceiling, ensuring no one is left behind while enabling more Malaysians to reach their full potential. That is not just corporate language. It describes a genuine tension in Malaysia's development story: a country that has produced significant economic growth but has not always ensured that growth reaches its most marginalised communities.

Programmes like NextGen Sellers are not a replacement for structural policy change. But they are a practical, immediate intervention that can change individual lives while the larger systems are still being worked on.

What the Pilot Is Testing

The inaugural cohort was launched at a stakeholder convening at Mereka Space in Kuala Lumpur, bringing together over 30 representatives from government agencies, employers, funders, and learning institutions. The pilot is designed to test the model before expanding to 80 participants across three cohorts, a deliberate, evidence-based approach that prioritises getting it right over getting it big quickly.

That restraint is worth noting. There is often pressure on social programmes to scale as fast as possible, to demonstrate reach and impact in numbers. The decision to run a genuine pilot first to learn, adjust, and verify that the model works before replicating it suggests an organisation that is serious about outcomes rather than optics.

How to Apply

Applications for the second cohort are now open. The programme is fully funded and available to Malaysian youth aged 18 to 24 from B40 households who hold SPM, SKM, or equivalent qualifications and are not currently enrolled in full-time higher education.

For young Malaysians in that position who have qualifications, who have experience, who have skills that have never quite been recognised in the right context, this is a concrete opportunity worth exploring. Not a promise of an easy path, but a structured, supported, paid entry point into a professional career.

Aida is already on that path. The second cohort could be next.