Open For Business

Food delivery services have been in the news a lot lately, worldwide. Whilst the global economy slows down, the men and women on motorbikes get what food we want to us fast. But at what cost? We manage to speak with Sayantan Das about the current business model of foodpanda, and what's going to happen when Ramadan gets thrown into that mix.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Ramadan season is just a few days away and while there’s been a lot of conversation about the bazaars and balik kampung activities, a big part of Ramadan is also heading out to the mosque for prayers and practising their faith. But as we all know, the MCO and COVID-19 pandemic has changed this year's Ramadan drastically.   This is again where technology plays a huge role in helping people to stay connected. Muslim Pro is the number one Islamic app globally on the Apple App Store and Google Play with over 80 million users. This time of the year is typically the start of busyness for them. But now with the pandemic, they’re capitalising on the surge of users.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to Unesco, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on the education sector around the world with 138 countries forced to close schools and universities. This has affected 1.37 billion children and youth - or nearly 80% of the world’s student population. Going online doesn’t mean this solves the problem because online education comes with a whole different set of external challenges like connectivity as well as internal investments that need to be made as well. But one education group that has been toying with online and offline, a dual learning approach is Sunway Education Group.   Dr Elizabeth Lee, the CEO of Sunway Education Group came on the show to tell us more. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

These are unprecedented times for those handling HR. In less than a month, Human Resource leads have had to quickly shift focus from managing the safety of employees in the workplace to remotely managing new realities of pay cuts and retrenchments for business survival. We speak with HR specialists MyWave Sdn Bhd about solutions to the challenges being faced by HR leads today and get some insights into what the world of work could look like, when we eventually go back to work.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPIC Homes builds houses for the Orang Asli community. COVID-19 has halted those plans for the time-being, but that doesn’t mean the company is backing down. With the COVID-19 Alliance for Orang Asli, EPIC continues to aid their community with donations, food, and supplies - to ensure that the Orang Asli are safe and well-stocked during this time. We speak to John-Son Oei, Founder and CEO of EPIC Homes, about shifting gears, gathering data about donation drives, as well as plans for EPIC in the near future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Founded by Amy Cox Blair, award-winning social enterprise Batik Boutique trains women from low-income backgrounds here in KL to produce gifts and fashion accessories made from batik. She has a production centre where these women convene everyday to design and sew some truly beautiful hand made products - so you would think with the MCO, all this would come to a grinding halt. I can tell you now, it has not.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ATX Sdn. Bhd. is an MSC status company specialising in the IT, Telecommunication and Services industry in Malaysia. Their core business is in developing solutions and value added services for various sectors, and they work very closely with traditional retailers and mom and pop shops, to provide them with solutions to do mobile reloads from their shops, perform bills payment transactions, remittance and even purchase goods online.  So what happens when your customers close shop? According to CEO of ATX, Sashie Kumar, you pivot.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ServisHero is one of the leading professional service marketplace for home and office. With operations around the region, they had some aggressive plans for the year 2020. But as the COVID-19 virus started to spread into the region, they slowly saw a dip in core business. To make matters worse, the first week of MCO saw their business dropped 90% in revenue. And thus Disinfection2u.com was born within 36 hours. They now have disinfected over a million square feet in less than 2 weeks of operation. We speak to Karl Loo on how he managed to turn around his business in such a short space of time and the challenges in those 2 days of pivoting. ServisHero is part of Alliance Bank's #SupportLokal campaign.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Going digital is probably the most feasible way to maintain some sort of cash flow for your business. However, not many had a strong digital presence before the MCO hit, which is why many smaller F&B operators have been using platforms like WhatsApp for the ordering of meals or products. While this is certainly a good step, it's definitely not sustainable and causes a disruption in business processes. Kimberly Wan saw the gap in the market and quickly co-founded Otomate Me, a software acting as a service company that helps companies of all sizes to personalise and automate their outreach. Hear more about it on today's Voice of SMEs. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

VMO is an events booking online platform to help you with everything you need for any types of events, be it corporate functions or personal ocassions like weddings and birthdays. Over the course of the years in operations, they have grown to over 2,000 listings just before the MCO. We got in touch with Vincent Kok, the Founder of VMO, who talks about how he not only created or pivoted his business during this time but also raised funds to grow the company.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.