The 10th EC Class of 2016, held on June 28th, saw a total of 115 participants who turned up to learn about mobile commerce (m-commerce) from leaders in the segment.
The first speaker of the day was Joshua Sew (pictured, below), executive director and founder of Jocom, a mobile shopping platform for groceries and lifestyle goods. Sew spoke about the impact and trend of m-commerce in the ASEAN region, presumably where the next m-commerce gold rush would take place.
“Mobile connection and m-commerce adoption will grow at a very high rate, and there are quarters that believe m-commerce will exceed the growth of e-commerce at 42% to 13%. M-commerce is catching up to e-commerce,” said Sew, who noted that many of ASEAN’s Main 6 (Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Vietnam) have transitioned to using mobile devices in place of personal computers.
With 90% of any time spent on mobile devices being dominated by social media use, Sew noted the importance of utilising this information to further grow businesses. He also advised participants to look into cashless transactions, which are part and parcel of the m-commerce wave, providing the examples of Indonesia and the Philippines, where Jocom has expanded to.
The second speaker was the CEO of MyBazar Malaysia, Armin Osmancevic (pictured, below), who introduced his product, mobile platform MyBazar, as a means for merchants to increase sales and grow their businesses at zero cost.
“E-commerce and m-commerce is an illusion, unless you can get control. Control over your product, and control over your cost,” said Osmancevic.
Keeping control of the product entails being in control of the pricing, any communication being performed about the product, the product’s marketing, sale, and delivery, as well as the building of the brand.
Osmancevic shared that costs entailed things such as the minimisation of subscription fees, removing hidden costs, equipment investments, and time investments, while aiming for nationwide visibility, and taking advantage of free and available facilities, such as the photo studio at SITEC, or educational opportunities such as SITEC’s EC Classes. According to him, MyBazar combines the best of social media, communication, transaction, payment and delivery in one single app, which is completely free.
When questioned about the app’s revenue stream, Osmancevic noted that revenue comes from any consumers who utilise the convenience of the app in paying for and delivering their items, which he notes is cheaper than actually travelling to a location to purchase the item.
The third speaker of the day was Han (pictured, below), co-founder of O2O Commerce, who spoke about utilising the high penetration of mobile devices as a means of driving traffic.
His product targets brick and mortar merchants, and plays on the general wish to use free wifi to show ads and point out nearby deals to consumers who log on to that wifi, with revenue drawn from ads, rather than the merchants themselves.
“Never allow your customers the excuse of not being able to find a product. That is a failing of the merchant, rather than of the customer,” said Han.
The company provides a wifi gadget for the merchants, which he notes will drive traffic to sellers without a conflict of interest, and grow awareness of a brand.
“According to a university professor in Hong Kong, O2O is the next business opportunity worth a few billion dollars. The key to this is building trust,” he noted.
The new market info session saw Jack Leong (left), the business development manager of Web2ship, speaking about his service.
Web2ship is a shipping solutions provider that targets small e-commerce businesses. Among its features include the ability to support multiple currencies, as well as providing a real-time shipping calculator to its users.
At the end of the EC Class, lucky draw prizes were given out, and photos were taken to commemorate the event.
