This article was written for B2B. Click here for the original story. 

EasyParcel open to Brunei expansion 

By Jennee Grace U Rubrico

Malaysia-based online courier services company EasyParcel is open to expanding its services to Brunei, Clarence Leong, the company’s chief executive said.

Leong said that given the number of online shoppers in the sultanate, it would make sense for EasyParcel to operate in Brunei.

The company currently operates in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

“Everyone’s buying online, so the market is at least there. It doesn’t mean that the size is small. But this is a normal practice, so there’s a potential,” Leong told B2B in an interview.

He also said that the decision to enter Brunei would depend on the market’s reception. “If someone wants us to be here [Brunei], we’ll be here.”

Leong said that EasyParcel will also have to find people in the country who believe in the company’s business model.

“A lot of times, people ask the question, ‘why EasyParcel, and why we don’t go direct [to logistics companies]?’  Why do we need to go to the middleman and then we get the benefits? So we need a team that actually believes in what we do and only then can we actually think further,” he said.

“Talent is the thing that built [the business] to where we are today. These people actually believe in what we do.”

EasyParcel’s business model is to connect small-scale merchants like Facebook and Instagram vendors with logistics companies to give the sellers access to cheap shipping rates.

Through its website, the company pools the courier demands of small vendors and generates enough volume to get cheaper shipping rates for them from its logistics partners.

“If you’re a [seller], you might not just be sticking with company A. You might want an option of A,B, C, and D. How are you going on board with A,B,C, or D with the best price?  Because you definitely have to commit to a certain volume to reach that. With a normal business I don’t think you can do that,” Leong explained.

Leong said EasyParcel does not think of logistics companies as competitors, but as partners.

“We consider them our partners… We are always the platform where you can choose multiple [courier services]… [but] they are all our partners because they are the ones who would actually be doing the work. We are just linking customers to them. In the end, it’s still their job,” he said.

Leong also said that EasyParcel at the moment enjoys monopoly in the region for its business model, adding that this is the time for the company to expand rapidly.

He also said that there had been initial plans to expand to more markets in Southeast Asia, but that at the moment, the company’s focus has shifted to growing the business deeper in the markets that it is already in.

“We actually receive a lot of enquiries coming from other countries, like the Philippines, even Vietnam, Cambodia, but I think for now, we want to focus on four [existing markets] because it’s not easy to manage different language. That’s the most difficult part,” he said.

This article was written for B2B. Click here for original story.

iflix to allow users to comment on shows 

By Jennee Grace U Rubrico

Video streaming company iflix is looking to incorporate a feature on its website that would make the user viewing experience more interactive.

In a presentation during the first Brunei CEO Summit held last May, iflix chief executive Azran Osman-Rani said a feature that enables users to comment on the shows they watch is now under consideration.

The idea, he said, was inspired by applications like Twitch, a livestreaming video platform and community for gamers that focuses on video gaming and playthroughs, and is aimed at the younger market.

“For [the younger audience that plays video games], it’s not just that ‘this is me and the video game’, but that ‘I’m part of a community’. That creates a more social and interactive experience. So taking inspiration from applications like Twitch is the ability for people to comment and engage others while watching TV shows,” Azran said.

The feature will not post comments in real time, Azran said, noting that iflix shows are not live.

“What we do is we time the comments,” he said, explaining that after a user comments on a particular scene, the comment would subsequently come out on the same scene when other viewers hit the exact point in the video that the comment was made.

iflix has also started talking to Hollywood studios to get actors and directors to also comment on their own shows, he said.

“It’s the 21^st century, so let’s move on to 21^st century television.”

Azran said that the feature could drive traffic away from pirated services towards iflix.

“This provides a unique feature you would not get using pirated services or cable and satellite services,” he said.
He also said the the move is in line with iflix’s focus on “the next generation”. He notes that 80 per cent of iflix users are under 30 years old who primarily use a mobile phone as their mobile phones as their entertainment device.

“They want to be able to engage with people,” he said.

He did not give a timeframe for the deployment of the feature.

Azran said the feature is the latest of several that the company constantly comes up with to keep up with the “giants” in the video streaming and entertainment industry.

“We always have to recognise that we are small and we’re competing with giants… The only way to stay alive as a small player is to move along faster. Moving fast, constantly trying new things,” he noted.

He added that that while not all of iflix’s ideas worked, iflix continues to try new things to stay ahead of competition.

“That’s the spirit of constantly innovating: having the mindset to say, six or seven or eight [ideas] didn’t work, and that’s okay because it’s the speed of trying things – that’s the only thing that keeps us ahead of the big global giants of Silicon valley or the big lumbering satellite TV giants that still charging a lot of money when the reality is that the phones that we are carrying today have far more computing power,” he said.

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, iflix was established in 2015 as a subscription video-on-demand service that is focused on emerging markets. It allows users to access TV shows and movies through different platforms, including mobile phones. With a focus on localising content, the company prides itself for providing access to regional and local programmes, as well as for providing subtitles for these programmes in the languages of the localities they are accessed in.

iflix is reported to have more than five million subscribers around the world as of May 2017. The service is currently being offered in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brunei, the Maldives, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon, Egypt and Sudan.