Open For Business

Today on Voice of SMEs, we turned our attention to the concerts-and-live-events scene to learn about how they’re coping, as well as what it means from a financial standpoint to cancel concerts that have already been booked ahead of time.  We got in touch with Ratna Kumar Nadarajan, founder of Mojo Projects, to help us expand on these issues. 

In this episode of Extraordinary Endeavor, Mike Chu of PTT Outdoor and Yuet Kim Lim of PichaEats learn insightful tips on sales and commercial strategies for their respective industries from veteran Fitpreneur and our mentor for the episode, Vikram Aditya Bhatia.

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One of the strangest boons that the MCO has given us is the catalyst for many industries to finally go through with plans for digital innovation and transformation. The property sector, for example, was in sore need of reinvention, which was the idea behind LoanPlus, an online platform designed to streamline mortgage and other housing loan processes. We had LoanPlus co-founder, Jared Lim, on the line to discuss his thoughts on the proptech industry and their performance throughout the past couple of months.

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When your business relies on face-to-face interaction to collect data and research, it can be a little tricky when you’re not allowed to be ‘face-to-face’. How does a market research company deal with this challenge during the MCO, and how will they adapt to these challenges when it comes to the new normal?

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Both the events and travel industry have been hit hard as a result of the pandemic. So what happens to companies that deal in both travel and events at the same time? How does a company pivot when both its core industries have taken significant damage because of global lockdowns? 

To expand on this, we got in touch with Yeoh Siew Hoon, the editorial director of Northstar Travel Group Asia and the founder of WiT (Web in Travel), a multi-location event that gathers the biggest innovators in the travel-tech scene on the same stage, every year. However, this year Siew Hoon and her team will have to figure out how to take all the content that was designed for a live platform and deliver it online instead. 

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People not being outdoors has posed a huge issue for Spectrum Outdoor Marketing, as they provide outdoor advertising like LED billboards. We had managing director, Henry Low, give us a little insight on how an outdoor marketing company has been navigating the previous few months.

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Mulah is originally a homegrown customer relationship management company, with Mulah Rewards as an additional loyalty rewards program started in 2017. With many of their clients being primarily from the F&B industry, Mulah had to find an alternative use for the structure they’d put into place for their CRM.

We managed to get co-founder Nicholas Kai to explain more about how they turned their rewards program into a contact tracing solution for their clients, which you can access at https://www.covid19registry.com.my/

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Table distancing. Body temperature scanning. Contact tracing. Hyper-sanitizing. Dining at restaurants post-Movement Control Order is definitely not the experience we remember it to be. Storehub Chieftain Fong Wai Hong joins us to discuss the new normal for F&B businesses, quick wins to keep your customers comfortable at your outlet and strategies to keep cash flow steady in case another lockdown is on the horizon.

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BookXcess is known for 3 things - discounted books, signature outlets, and its annual Big Bad Wolf massive book sale. In fact, it’s the largest book sale in the world. But with COVID-19 throwing everyone a curveball, companies like BookXcess need to figure out how to navigate this new world in which social distancing is the norm. We speak to Andrew Yap, co-founder of BookXcess, about aggressive marketing strategies, going online, and the idea that the pandemic may have forced them to grow into a stronger company.

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Many food operators facing shutdowns have turned to digital delivery platforms to help them sustain their businesses. However, many of these delivery platforms like Grab require a merchants to pay a certain fee to use their services. Sean Goh, the Managing Director and Country Head for Grab Malaysia, joined us on Voice of SMEs to talk about this hot topic of discussion. 

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