http://rwe.sciedupress.com Research in World Economy Vol. 10, No. 3; 2019 Published by Sciedu Press 45 ISSN 1923-3981 E-ISSN 1923-399X The Essentials and Challenges of Online Business Among Bumiputera SME Entrepreneurs in Malaysia Hardy Loh Rahim 1 , Mohd Ali Bahari Abdul Kadir 1 , Che Asniza Osman 1 , Hardi Emrie Rosly 1 & Adlan Ahmad Bakri 1 1 Malaysian Academy of SME and Entrepreneurship Development, & Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia Correspondence: Hardy Loh Rahim, Malaysian Academy of SME and Entrepreneurship Development, & Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. Received: July 19, 2019 Accepted: August 15, 2019 Online Published: September 26, 2019 doi:10.5430/rwe.v10n3p45 URL: https://doi.org/10.5430/rwe.v10n3p45 Abstract The e-commerce trend has increasingly grown in Malaysia. The revenue for e-commerce platforms in 2019 is USD3.7 billion with more than 20 million users. There were various calls from the ministries for Malaysian to take up e-commerce as it is progressively contributing to the country’s GDP. Bumiputera entrepreneurs have been demanded to play active roles in e-commerce, however their participation and performance are in an alarming state. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the challenges faced, examine the awareness of the existing business support and identify support and assistance which can be implemented to address the issues faced by Bumiputera SME online entrepreneurs. The research was done using survey format. Questionnaire was distributed via online survey. The population is the online entrepreneurs from Malaysian Internet Entrepreneurs Association (PUIM). 493 respondents participated in this study. Findings show that the main challenges were the lack of access to financial assistance and lack of knowledge to conduct market study. While the training needed are Facebook Ads and Business Coaching. Research also shows that the higher the level of education, the lesser the constraints experienced and the greater the level of confidence in business success. Finally, several improvements and suggestions have been proposed. Keywords: online business, E-commerce, SME, Malaysia, Bumiputera 1. Introduction The way business is being performed has evolved as we move towards a rapid development of information communication technology in the 21st century. The world has embraced the Internet, which in turn has created a rising new medium of doing business, known as the e-commerce. E-commerce is also often defined as an opportunity tool for both large companies and small medium enterprises (SMEs) to penetrate the global market, thus providing the most appealing way to publicly widespread their products and services. It is expected that SME will be able to capture the global market, meet the global consumer’s need and gaining opportunities to compete with the big, global player companies by using the e-commerce. International Trade and Industry Deputy Minister, Datuk Ahmad Maslan (NSTP, 2018) mentioned that the e-commerce sector has seen significant growth in terms of contribution to the country’s economic growth. He further elaborated that data collected from the Statistics Department showed that E-commerce contribution to Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) had increased to 6.1 per cent or RM74.6 billion in 2016 compared to 5.9 per cent or RM68.3 billion in 2015. It was planned that by 2020, the GDP contributed by e-commerce sector will be RM211 billion in total. However, Bumiputera entrepreneurs are repeatedly alleged to be left behind in achieving success in the economic development (Omar & Azmi, 2015). Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Tamby Chik (Bernama, 2017b) mentioned that the failure rate among the Bumiputera entrepreneurs is extremely high. He stressed that only 18% of the Bumiputera entrepreneurs who registered with Companies Commission of Malaysia are able to sustain their business in the last five years. Bumiputera is the largest ethnic group in Malaysia, yet its business performance is upsetting. This dire situation represents an alarming issue to be studied. Therefore, it is crucial for the government and relevant agencies to be able to continuously offering better training to Bumiputera online entrepreneurs that focuses on sustaining the businesses so that the various grants given out to start up entrepreneurs are worthy investments by the government and agencies (Ngah, 2017).