There has been much buzz about AirAsia’s latest expansion into the digital space, some argue that founder Tony Fernandes is forced to pivot as his planes are all grounded and needs to innovate, while others know exactly what this maverick is up to and how this expansion fits into the bigger airline story.
The pandemic has accelerated a lot of things including digitalisation for Tony Fernandes founder of low cost carrier AirAsia the launch of his SuperApp is sooner than later. A big promoter of digital Tony embraces technology as much to his fascination of sweet food, the application he is building is not centered around food like Grab or Uber but on travel and lifestyle. The recent acquisition of Gojek Thailand is part of the bigger picture of this mans desire to make the AirAsia SuperApp a regional behemoth rivaling the existing incumbents.
In his LinkedIn post (Tony dropped all other social media platforms) Group CEO Tony Fernandes shares his vision and gives a diagram on how the superapp will appear in the near future.
Feeling as excited as I was 19 years ago in the picture , though maybe not quite as slim.
When you say super app, many people think of food delivery and ride hailing. What airasia is building is a lifestyle super app anchored on Travel, which is what we do best.
My son called the other day and said he booked a Virgin ticket from London to New York on the airasia super app. Now, he wasn’t just trying to support his dad, he had looked around all the websites, checked their prices and said we had the best deal. That made me proud.
With our digital transformation and the latest Gojek deal, we are taking what Gojek and others have built on ride hailing and food delivery, and we ADD what we’re good at, and create a lifestyle app . You are used to AirAsia’s way of flying, with the now-famous tagline ‘Now Everyone can Fly’.
Now, we’re expanding that in the digital arena to offer airasia’s way of Life, providing everything from flights, logistics, financial services, online education to health for everyone.
Hope this gives you a better idea of our vision.
