Businesses should align with consumer purchasing behavior, says Grab Malaysia’s Public Affairs Director

Speaking at the Cyberview Tech Talk Webinar: Business Flashbacks of 2020 & Insights Towards 2021, Director of Public Affairs & Policy for Grab Malaysia, Ebi Azly Abdullah highlighted Grab Malaysia’s growth in the past 8 years and how it overcame the pandemic.

“When Grab started, we were just another startup. But, now we have over 40 million downloads,” he said.

He further explained that revenue during the Movement Control Order (MCO) dropped by almost 80 to 90 percent. Nevertheless, food and mart delivery saw a 30 percent increase. 

“At the initial stage of MCO we had more than 6, 000 new merchants registered with us, and now we’ve got more than 20, 000 new merchants altogether. Furthermore, 1 in 3 Malaysians use the Grab app,” he highlighted.

According to Ebi, the pandemic had accelerated the digitalisation process 7 years ahead in less than a year. He then emphasised that going digital is very important for businesses while explaining how e-commerce has helped startups to operate their business during the MCO. He also addressed that digitalisation helps in efficient data management.

Ebi stated that business owners need to be agile as certain things change frequently and during MCO things even change daily. So, in order to grow, businesses need to be able to adapt to any situation.

“Businesses should align with consumer purchasing behavior. For instance, during MCO people were restricted from moving around. Hence there was a drop in our transportation service. So, we transformed our drivers to moving products,” he described. 

“In a nutshell, everything has become online, so you either go digital or die,” he concluded.

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