Online lifeline for struggling businesses

• “The biggest problems in the world are caused by great inequalities,” said Co-founder & CEO Wai Hong Fong of 500-backed StoreHub. “Why do some people have good access to technology and some people don’t? We want to even out that inequality in parts of the world where this is a major problem.”
• To do that, the company serves as a technology bridge for small-to-medium businesses, including food trucks, cafes, and salons, by providing an affordable point-of-sale system. Today, StoreHub operates in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, helping retail companies and restaurants make the leap online.
• Ultimately, Wai Hong wants to engage meaningfully with these underserved businesses. And that’s exactly what StoreHub did when the first lockdown in Malaysia was enforced. “If enough of our customers don’t do well, we won’t do well either,” he explained. This led to them rolling out a food delivery app within 48 hours!
• Today, StoreHub’s customers are saying, “If it’s not for StoreHub, if it’s not for Beep, we wouldn’t be alive right now.”
• Listen to the full podcast episode here.

Shopping sustainably with recommerce

• Are you prepared to pay more to shop sustainably? 55% of shoppers surveyed on 500-backed Carousell’s recommerce platforms say they are!
• Carousell Media Group (CMG) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau Southeast Asia and India (IAB SEA+India) partnered to release a new report developed from a survey of more than 61,500 users on Carousell’s platform across Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
• JJ Eastwood, Managing Director at CMG said, “We see a significant swing towards shopping sustainably to mitigate climate change and protect the environment, rather than purely to save money.”
• “It is also gratifying to see that our Carousell Group marketplaces are now synonymous with sustainability and social ethics, and we have seen a quantum increase in usage of our recommerce marketing platforms over the past two years,” he added.
• Get the research highlights here.

Alleviating a marketer’s headache

• The proliferation of martech tools presents a ripe opportunity for businesses to advertise more effectively, but it can also be overwhelming. According to Statista, there are close to 10,000 martech tools for marketers to choose from!
• That’s where 500-backed martech consultancy Ematic Solutions comes in. Its new partnership with experimentation platform VWO is set to benefit brands in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• Ematic helps businesses adopt the right technology mix for their marketing efforts, and the two companies will help fast-growing Asian businesses discover, experiment, and adopt top-notch martech tools, and in turn generate higher returns on investment.
• “Through the partnership, we can help APAC businesses build a robust, future-proof martech stack to support their growth,” said Brenda Tan, Head of Partnership.
• Read the full announcement here.