Open For Business

The beauty and skincare industry especially was a strange field to navigate during the MCO, with the general approach to dolling up for the workplace switching over to putting on your makeup for video conference calls. So to find out more about how this industry fared, we had co-founders of Pinkbox Cereal, Shafiqah Shafie & Mohd Iylia join us on the show. 

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PichaEats is in the business of providing halal buffet catering & meal delivery services, prepared by refugees families in our community. When the MCO was enforced, the social enterprise saw revenue from their catering segment fall to zero, but were quick to adjust to the new business environment to create value on different levels for their customers, secure the livelihoods of their chefs, and even found time to feed the frontliners and incubate a new business.

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With Raya fast approaching, comes the hunt for the perfect baju raya. One go-to label here in the Klang Valley, which prides itself in making one-of-a-kind designs for their customers is Innai Group. They are usually the busiest this time of year, as they cater to stylish Malaysian ladies looking for unique ensembles for special occasions.

So how does the MCO affect a fashion label like Innai? We speak with Izrin Ismail, founder of Innai Group.

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The ripple effects of COVID-19 on businesses are still being discovered as the days go by. Obvious effects are the massive issue of revenue and the increases in digital transformation. But a lot of relationships in business have also seen changes, what with the amount of pivoting and adjusting companies have had to do.

So today we had founder & CEO of affiliate marketing company Involve Asia, Jimmy How, on the line to discuss another factor of how businesses have been affected - how the various companies in their affiliate programme have been performing, how that in turn has affected Involve Asia, and the future of marketing in general. 

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Retail has thrived on data analytics by learning about their consumers in ways that were previously inaccessible. But after being blindsided by the COVID-19 pandemic, how can retailers and businesses once again use data to their advantage and begin the recovery process? We speak to Vernon Chua, retail data expert and CEO of Innergia Labs, about the role of data in a post-pandemic retail landscape, as well as lessons to be learned from this crisis moving forward.

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It cannot be denied that digital transformation has become the main priority for many businesses during and after the period of the MCO. Businesses that were totally offline have had to scramble to learn about all things e-commerce in a short period of time.

To discuss a little bit more about this, we had both Director of Strategic Planning, Priscilla Ambrose & Director of Technical Services, Francisco Pier, of Fintech Rakyat, join us on the show. 

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The training and coaching industry has had some particularly tough challenges when it came to remote working. CEO of corporate training company D’Jungle People, John Kam, came on the line today to share how the company got through the MCO and some lessons both D’Jungle People and their clients learned as a result.

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One thing’s for sure in light of COVID-19; digital transformation has skyrocketed and for many businesses the pandemic has been the trigger to finally make the leap. But for SMEs who don’t have the knowhow or the budget to go digital, where can they turn to for guidance and support? Gerard Pillai, Chief Strategy Evangelist of Alias Innovation, discusses the company’s FWD4.0 SME Financing Programme as well as their own plans for recovery post-pandemic.

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Orders.my is a small scale side project born out of an independent consultancy firm that specialises in real estate development, which is interesting, given that real estate has little to do with the F&B or delivery industry. James Tan, the co-founder of Kai Assets, joins us today to tell us the story of his brainchild's beginnings. 

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"Go digital or die" has become the reality of our post-pandemic world. Unfortunately in Malaysia, many were behind any form of digital adoption and were scrambling to get themselves digital ready. Thankfully, various parties have come together to put out an easy guide for anyone to go online. One of them is the eCommerce Jumpstart Programme by Sunway iLabs, in partnership with industry leaders like Alibaba, MDEC, MaGIC and Cradle Fund.

Matt van Leeuwen, the Chief Innovation Officer at Sunway Group and Director of Sunway iLabs joined us to speak about how it all came together.

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