Who is my Neighbour in a time like this

Image from MIT Sloan Management Review

Our daily news is filled with reports of COVID-19 — while these are heartbreaking news, it is the reality of what concerns us most. The situation is going drag out, many businesses will fold, families will encounter financial challenges when breadwinners lose their jobs. Efforts have been undertaken by different people to help support and sustain the healthcare workers, and communities.

A famous person once said: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his soul?”. To adapt it to business: “What good is it to be the only business standing, exploit this situation to make the most profit, and have no soul?”. The COVID-19 situation has brought out the goodness in mankind, where intentional collaboration is bearing fruit; and I have the privilege of working closely with the following companies.

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FMCGs’ relevance to mums during COVID-19

COVID-19 will change the face of business — just when we think social media has had its fair share of business disruption, nothing prepared us for COVID-19. We anticipate job uncertainty, contraction in spending, fear, along with recession, not to mention losing people we love to the virus.

Established brands that took decades to win our mindshare are not spared. Not only do they have to deal with disruption in factory production (social distancing), they also have to worry about losing their share of consumers’ wallet with contraction in spending and people switching to less pricey/ premium alternatives.

Knowing the concerns of FMCG clients, Roshni and her team at theAsianParent (“TAP”) was quick to put together a “Covid-19 Report — The Shifting Consumer Behaviour of Southeast Asian Mums”. The report is a compilation of insights from mummies in the region. Given that TAP has access to and engagement with more than 30 million parents in Southeast Asia, the views are representative of Southeast Asian mums at large.

Other than sharing feedback from these mums, FMCG clients are also given guidance on strategic implications. What I like most is the reminder to FMCG brands that: “This is not the time for selling, it’s the time to help.” Well said and the team at TAP has lived up to this statement in helping their clients to navigate the Southeast Asian markets in spite of the impact created by COVID-19. As at this writing, the team is beginning to put together a second report.

COVID-19 Report — The Shifting Consumer Behaviour of Southeast Asian Mums

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Enabling SMEs to survive during lock down

Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of many of our economies. Yet when a thunderstorm like COVID-19 hits us, the SMEs — which also employ more than 70% of our working population, tend to receive the hardest blow. In good times, they are already subject to much lesser credit facilities, and require a lot more effort to build up cash buffer.

When Malaysia implemented its lock down in mid-March 2020, we witnessed a stampede for food and essential in supermarkets — not only in Malaysia, but the spillover effect was also noticeable in Singapore. Shelves were wiped clean, not to mention toilet paper, which was precious commodity.

Whatever happened to instagramable restaurants and eateries? With that one announcement, not only did they lose daily restaurant takings, they also have to continue to bear rental cost, write offs from food wastage due to zero restaurant traffic, pay severance to staff who will be retrenched. Extremely gloomy to an already muted Lunar New Year season.

Knowing the plight of the restaurant owners, Wai Hong and his team at StoreHub worked round the clock to develop a food ordering platform for delivery/ takeaway (“BeepIt”) — all in less than two weeks! This is no small feat, given that existing food ordering platforms took years and raised sizeable investments to build their platforms. BeepIt is now 'live' and restaurant partners are able to have a new lease of life with the delivery/ pick up option.

Comments were raised around why StoreHub’s ordering solution would make a difference given that there are existing food delivery platforms. The reason is simple: StoreHub was not founded as a food delivery company — they provide integrated point-of-sale solutions to the retail facing SMEs. The motivation for the delivery platform was born out of wanting to help their SMEs survive COVID-19 and not to charge a platform fee similar to what was levied by other players — in fact many of their restaurant partners are not on the other food delivery platforms as the platform fees were too rich.

BeepIt is currently only available in Malaysia and has already seen great traction and take up rate. I know that StoreHub is not limiting BeepIt to Malaysia, and in good time, it will be available in Philippines, Thailand and hopefully Singapore.

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Taking care of the migrant workers

Thailand was one of the first countries in Southeast Asia to mandate a country-wide lock down in response to the spread of COVID-19. The Thai Government had called on insurers to design a COVID-19 insurance package for the public. While Sunday is a new kid on the block in the insurance space, they heeded the Government’s call and very quickly designed a FIGHTCOVID insurance product which could be purchased independently or added as a top up to existing health insurance or employee benefit policies.

Separately, Sunday had chosen to partner a leading telco in Thailand, and crafted a FIGHTCOVID product for a group of people that society will easily overlook — that of migrant workers. These are the people who have left their families and homes to work in a different country. They offered their youth and strength to help build our infrastructure, our homes, and in Thailand’s case — to work in farms as well. The quarters they stay in, are less comfortable compared to ours, and their accommodation is more densely populated than ours. When and should any of them fall ill, they could lose their income and have to nurse themselves back to health without family surrounding them.

Sunday’s FIGHTCOVID insurance provides inpatient, room & board and income benefits should one be quarantined. Cindy and her team were deliberate in providing such coverage as opposed to a lump sum payout as the infected ought to focus on recuperating in the hospital under the watchful eyes of doctors and nurses, and with a peace of mind. It is the right thing to do for one who is ill. To the credit of the telco — they too, have decided to extend the FIGHTCOVID insurance at no cost to the microeconomic gig and migrant workers who are their subscribers.

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Enable financing to SMEs

An OECD report on “The Impact of the Global Crisis on SME and entrepreneurship financing and policy reponse …” states that access to financing remains a key challenge for the survival of SMEs. With COVID-19, not only are SMEs experiencing a massive drop in demand, tightening in credit terms, they also have to abide by social distancing — when combined together, can decimate SMEs very quickly.

The US government has announced a U$2.2 Trillion stimulus package which will be managed by the Small Business Administration (“SBA”). While the financial support is appreciated, the lenders within SBA community have to scramble to find solutions to allow them to handle the expected spike in volume. There will need to be much co-ordination given that their teams are also working remotely.

Forbes has assembled a list of fintech solutions that are offered free during this period. Despite being a new member to the business community in Austin (TX), Elena and her team at TurnkeyLender have decided to join the support and offer their lending module at no cost. This enables the community of SBA lenders to be ready (in quick time) with the tools necessary to disburse the funds in accordance to lending parameters.

Technology has come a long way since SARS — to enable remote operations. What lenders have to navigate will be internal policies and processes to allow for digital transactions. This will likely be a permanent replacement for processes/workflow that once had to be done in a face-to-face manner. Once internal policies and processes are ironed out, lenders who use Turnkey Lenders’ platform will be able to focus on addressing the financing needs of their community of SMEs.

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Innovation must continue

One of the first companies to implement free access to their platform is Patsnap. Why were they able to do so? The company has sales, support and technology teams in China, London and Toronto. They were the first company in our portfolio to experience a lock down when China mandated it over the Lunar New Year period. They knew that despite the dire situation China was in, corporations and government departments must continue with their work — even if they were done remotely.

While Patsnap was in conversations with many customers, they knew decision makers had other urgent issues to deal with — remote working, ensuring staff is well, and many more Business Continuity concerns. Decision makers would have little interest to consider signing off on a patent/business intelligence platform. As a result, Jeffrey and his team decided to offer the Patsnap platform for free for users in China, so that work can go on. This has definitely created a lot of goodwill to Patsnap. Jeffrey and his account on lessons learnt from COVID-19 can be found here.

Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has spread to other regions, Patsnap has decided to offer the platform for free to all global users, till end May 2020. Innovation has to continue and people should continue to keep working rather than dwell on the negativity of COVID-19.

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Conclusion

We have gone back to the days of looking out for each other — much like what the ‘kampung’ (village) spirit is about — and while it is sad to see that it takes a pandemic to bring the village spirit out, it is still never too late. As a business community, we ought to reconsider the merits of perhaps making less money singly, but having the larger ecosystem progress — so that no SME or business is left behind.

Hence when I consider "Who, then is my neighbour in a time like this?" — it will be our business partners, our customers and perhaps even their families. While times are going to be challenging, we have to be deliberate and intentional in playing our part to keep each other's businesses afloat by extending a helping hand — in the form of free platforms, or charging a lower fee, or offering value added insights — in a time like this.

#TheAsianParent #RoshniMahtani #OneStoreHub #FongWaiHong #EasySunday #CindyKua #TurnkeyLender #ElenaIonenko #Patsnap #JeffreyTiong

Source: Carmen Yuen Medium
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