By KEVIN WONG / Graphic By TMR

AXIATA Digital Services Sdn Bhd, PUC Ventures and SK Planet’s online marketplace, 11street, is in the middle of enhancing its users’ shopping experience to another level, an effort that is also expected to contribute significantly to Malaysia’s digital economy. 

11street CEO Cheong Chia Chou said the project is also in tandem with the increasing need for a stronger e-commerce ecosystem, which would allow customers’ physical digital journey to be fully integrated.

He said businesses are being pushed to ride the wave of the rapid industry expansion to push their business growth on a larger scale for better profitability and market presence.

“The online marketplace in Malaysia can certainly be expected to grow at a swift speed in the coming years and the revamped 11street is reiterating that commitment to further contribute to the digital segment in our future plans,” he said.

The company is one of the biggest local online marketplace, would be upgrading its online shopping experience to meet with the growing user and Internet penetration of 85.7% among Malaysians.

Cheong said 11street’s goal is to create a seamless and integrated customer shopping experience, as well as to emphasise on business development for sellers to increase their capability and capacity in running their businesses.

“In light of this, 11street will be focusing on key areas for near future, which are payment options, shopper experience, logistics, mobile application, online-to-offline (O2O) commerce, official stores, micro social influencers and global trade.

“We are looking forward to the next phase of our growth and transformation as it focuses on continuously providing more benefits to both customers and sellers,” he said.

11street achieved 300% in gross merchandise volume from 2015 to 2017 and is upbeat of sustaining the growth.

“At the same time, I believe there are a lot of opportunities for us to grow and expand the services within 11street with the eight initiatives.

“With the O2O experience and expansion to global trade, we are excited to embark on this journey to help bring a better digital ecosystem for the Malaysian community,” Cheong said.

He added that it would take between six and 12 months to revamp the existing 11street system.

“The team has been working aggressively and tirelessly where some of the initiatives are already available,” he said.

In July, Axiata Digital and investment holding company PUC Bhd strengthened their partnership through two new agreements which involved their subsidiaries.

PUC’s subsidiary and advertising agency RedHot Media (RHM) will be handling traditional media buying and planning services for Axiata Digital’s analytics, data and advertising agency for the first agreement.

In addition, Axiata Digital will offer RHM digital services, which include but not limited to digital media buying, programmatic and social media management.

Meanwhile, the second agreement involved Presto, an e-wallet platform by PUC’s subsidiary EPP Solution Sdn Bhd and Axiata Digital’s e-mobile wallet Boost.

The collaboration between Presto and Boost will look into inter-operability between the services and enable end-users to use their services to make payments or transfer to other users for free.

Earlier in April this year, PUC had acquired a stake and management control of 11street via an investment of RM40 million in Celcom Planet Sdn Bhd.