Local e-commerce firm Oway has expanded its digital offerings this year, launching Oway Fresh, which CEO Alok Kumar is positioning to address greater consumer demand for more convenience, safety and quality in fresh and packaged groceries.

“We’re making this happen by ensuring shorter delivery times and a simplified online experience for Yangon consumers,” he said.

Despite the challenges of meeting consumer expectations, preferences and logistics for fresh vegetables, fruits and meat during COVID-19, over 30 percent of Oway Fresh’s customers are repeat users, a sign that consumers are becoming more comfortable with e-commerce and confident in brands like Oway.

Oway started out as a full-service online travel company in Myanmar, working with such companies as Air Asia, C-trip and Skyscanner. Over the years it has diversified into ride-hailing service, fleet management and e-commerce.

In an interview, Mr Kumar talked about the e-commerce trend in Myanmar and Oway’s business plans amid the pandemic:

Why did you launch Oway Fresh at this time?

Myanmar saw a lot of action in online food delivery just before COVID-19, and with our experience in ride-hailing, we knew it was not worth getting into a cluttered market and burning cash, so we turned our attention to other opportunities that COVID-19 could offer, and soon realised there was a huge need in daily essentials.

With wet markets closing across Yangon, it made perfect sense to quickly start servicing consumers with daily essentials so they could have a safe and economical meal at home.

We have a very simple end-to-end business model, starting from demand generation to last-mile fulfilment. Orders are generated on Owayfresh.com, and products are sourced from manufacturers, farms and wholesalers in real time, and delivered the same day to consumers.

We have a strict one-day delivery policy – orders are received till 3pm and delivered the next day. We have 99pc availability: whatever is listed on Owayfresh.com is always available as we have service assurance contracts with our suppliers.

What are the challenges in tourism during COVID-19?

The travel industry challenges are well recognised and understood during COVID-19. We do a few things differently to ensure business continuity and that we remain relevant to consumers during the pandemic. We are able to offer dedicated service for relief and evacuation flights into and out of Myanmar, as we have unique technological capabilities to book multicity and ex-Myanmar flights. We are also helping consumers to fly between two destinations without transiting Myanmar. We have a much larger responsibility to ensure that people are able to reach home and family during these tough times. Our teams do their best to arrange complex journeys, as there are many regulations and factors that we need to consider before finalising a travel itinerary.

Was e-commerce better in Myanmar before COVID-19?

Before the pandemic hit, e-commerce was relatively small and limited to certain categories like online shopping for household items, food and travel. It depended largely on cash on delivery. There was little expected growth in e-commerce, as Myanmar payment systems were still evolving and consumers had little trust in some of its most important aspects, like product quality, delivery time, pre-payment, refunds and cancellations.

E-commerce only began to grow when consumers started worrying about the spread of COVID-19, which pushed them to experiment with e-commerce. I think most of them had a good first experience and are now more open to buying online before being able to handle the product. This is a huge leap for e-commerce in Myanmar.

What are the key factors to improving e-commerce?

There are four crucial aspects to encouraging growth:

• Digital ecosystem: While Myanmar has all the digital enablers in place – like 80pc smartphone penetration, 60pc data users, 40pc social media penetration – it still lags behind in developing a digital ecosystem that benefits everyone by making transactions simpler, safer and smarter. There are barriers for online payments and high transaction costs compared to the cash-based system.

• Behavioural shift: Consumers are habituated to a cash-based economy for reasons like convenience, trust and popularity. To change this behaviour, there must be a strong catalyst for e-commerce and merchants need to provide compelling reasons for consumers to buy online by offering discounts and more convenience.

• Consumer awareness and scale: Any large transformation will require consistent and collective efforts and investment to raise consumer awareness and participation. Though there have been some efforts in this direction, it’s still not strong enough, as e-commerce has remained limited to Myanmar two biggest cities in the past 6-7 years. Unless there is expansion, e-commerce will largely remain a good-to-have channel rather than a must-have, which will limit its market share.

• Efficient logistics: Logistics play a pivotal role in the e-commerce supply chain and determine the overall satisfaction of customers, efficiency and quality of service. Unfortunately, logistics are very complex, require lots of expertise and an extensive network of small systems. We are still far behind in developing a strong, efficient and economical logistics network that supports e-commerce growth.

Ref: Myanmar Times