Malaysian firm Ideanation launches AI agent platform aimed at small businesses

A platform built for non-experts

Ideanation Technologies, a Malaysian company based around Petaling Jaya, has launched an AI platform called Agent Engine. As The Star reported, it is meant to help businesses cut running costs and get more done as they hand routine work to software.

The pitch centres on agentic AI, meaning software that carries out tasks on its own instead of only answering questions. The company thinks this suits small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that want to grow without a matching rise in headcount.

How Agent Engine works

Most AI chat tools depend on the user writing careful, detailed instructions, known as prompts. Founder and group chief executive Raymond Dinesh Gabriel says many businesses want AI but lack the know-how to write good prompts or set systems up. Ideanation's answer is a platform where users create an agent for a specific job.

The examples given are generating sales leads, running digital marketing activities and producing written content. Gabriel named affordability and ease of use as the two problems the company set out to solve.

Underneath, the platform relies on large language models, the text-generating systems behind modern chatbots. The core ones are Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude.

What it costs

There are three monthly plans, at US$20, US$50 and US$100. They differ in how many agents a user can create and how much they can use them. The middle US$50 Pro plan allows up to six agents, and Gabriel put its cost at less than RM7 a day.

To show the savings, he pointed to a digital marketing manager earning up to RM7,000 a month. By his estimate, that money could pay for subscriptions for about 28 people, who could together set up as many as 168 agents.

Reading the productivity claims

Gabriel says one person using agentic AI can do the work of about four or five. He frames the goal as freeing staff from repetitive chores so they can spend time on more strategic work. In his words, "We don't want to take away jobs."

These are the founder's figures, not independent results. The salary comparison is also an illustration: it assumes agents can do the work of a marketing manager, and the company itself says the product is a productivity tool, not a direct replacement for staff. A small firm should test how well an agent performs real tasks before counting on savings like these.

Consulting, custom software and data

The subscription is only part of the business. Ideanation also advises companies on which processes could be automated and builds agents to fit them. For clients with more specialised needs, it makes custom AI-native software, which Gabriel describes as built with AI at its core instead of bolted onto older programs.

The company is also looking at administrative work such as claims management. Gabriel mentioned talks with a firm whose claims procedures were eating up staff time that could go to customers.

On security, he said the platform uses third-party services with end-to-end encryption, a method that keeps data readable only to the sending and receiving ends. Users can also link their existing cloud storage, so their files do not have to be stored separately by Ideanation.

Targets and what comes next

Ideanation has about 180 employees across the group, and Gabriel said it has used the technology in its own operations. It also runs two subsidiaries, Createwills Sdn Bhd, which offers legal and financial technology, and People Systems Consultancy Sdn Bhd. Its two core service areas are branding and digital marketing, and AI-native technology.

The company wants at least RM10mil in group revenue over the next year, with digital marketing expected to bring in RM2mil to RM3mil of that. Over three years it aims for about RM100mil, helped by wider uptake of its AI products. Gabriel called margins "pretty good" but accepted the firm must keep investing in software development and in widening what its agents can do.

It also plans to push the platform across the region. Gabriel's longer-term aim is to bring agentic AI to businesses of every size, especially micro enterprises with little money to spend on advanced tools.