Leverage On Digital Platform To Meet Customer Demands, Says ASEAN Chamber

By Nurul Hanis Izmir KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 (Bernama) -- Leveraging on the digital platform to meet customer demand, Malaysia’s young entrepreneurs who dominated 40 per cent of the country’s population are becoming more powerful in today’s business. This new platform seems to work well with the government’s aspiration in making the digital economy as the new driver of development. “It is the relevant way of conducting business and marketing since most of us own one or maybe two smartphones. Everything can be done using this device. “They can use digital marketing on the e-commerce platform to capture more market. Therefore we should take advantage of this technology. “Not only we could widen the country’s income growth, but we could also take it beyond Malaysia and enter the ASEAN market, home to 667 million population,” ASEAN Chamber of Commerce president Moehamad Izat Emir told Bernama. He said the Gen-Y entrepreneurs have become more powerful today and they have a bigger influence to generate new mode of businesses using technology. Based on a report produced by Google and Temasek Holdings, the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia is expected to be worth US$200 billion by 2025, while the mobile commerce is expected to ride on e-commerce growth as smartphone users account for more than 90 per cent of Southeast Asian internet users. Mobile commerce penetration was at 58 per cent in Thailand, 40 per cent in Malaysia, 39 per cent in Singapore, 33 per cent in Vietnam, 31 per cent in Indonesia, and 25 per cent in the Philippines as of January 2018. The mobile commerce or m-commerce could be defined as the buying and selling of goods and services over the internet using mobile phones. Moehamad Izat said since all the 10 ASEAN member countries have a lot of similarities in terms of culture, beliefs and religion they should be able to attract more business deals among themselves while promoting healthy competition. “We also eat the same staple food (rice) and we have other similarities in terms of natural resources like palm oil, oil and gas, rubber and textile,” he said. Moehamad Izat said, together, ASEAN should be as strong as other trading bloc and is on track to becoming the fourth largest economy behind China, India and the US by 2030 (overtaking the EU and Japan). He also urged the youth who inherited their parents’ businesses to step up the business model/plan to another higher level and engage the digital platform to reach a wider market. “Even if their parents are into small businesses like “keropok lekor”, “batik canting” in the village, they can promote the product via the social media and sell it to the locals and buyers abroad. “I also notice they like to venture into the food and beverages business like the food truck. It is good that they like to be their own bosses, but instead of having one food truck, they should expand their business to 10 food trucks (for example) and have 10 brands. “They can get assistance from the government agencies namely SIRIM in terms of improving their brand name… and having a good brand name is crucial as it can help bring their product to the international level and not just being the “jaguh kampung” (home ground champion). They can learn from big names in the market today such as Coca- Cola, Nestle and etc”. However, he urged the young entrepreneurs, the Bumiputera (Malaysian indigineous) especially, to be smart and fast in seizing the opportunities provided by the government and its agencies’ through various programmes or incentives for startups. He noted that there are numbers of young entrepreneurs who actually have the creative and innovative business plan, but they stayed away from the funds offered as they are afraid they will not be able to service the loans. “This is why the chamber has organised and will organised again coaching session on business financing for small and medium enterprises in the quest to extend financial assistance to them. “We have and will partner Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Bhd again to assist the companies if they need any funding”. -- BERNAMA