Ninja Van achieved 100m parcel delivery as of July 2021, attributable to Malaysians supporting local brands to help businesses bounce back

by AUFA MARDHIAH / pic by BLOOMBERG

MALAYSIA’S courier and delivery services anticipate a better performance this year, after generally recording growth in parcel volumes in 2021 on the emergence of e-commerce nationwide.

Ninja Van, for one, managed to achieve 100 million parcel delivery as of July 2021, attributable to the trend of Malaysians supporting local brands to help businesses bounce back after the challenging past two years.

“In 2022, Ninja Van will focus on equipping our sorting centres with automatic conveyors to increase efficiency, further extending our services to non e-commerce sectors, adding up to 500 headcount and increasing our fleet size to better support the growth of local SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and businesses,” Adzim Halim, the CEO of Ninja Van said in a statement to The Malaysian Reserve.

“We are also exploring potential plans for the long-term impact and benefit of the communities and customers that we serve. We are committed to go beyond logistics to empower our local SMEs and businesses.”

Ninja Van recently started their seven-day operations schedule across Malaysia and is planning towards expanding into different industries and introducing new products and services that will further bring their shippers to greater heights for a more driven future growth.

Lalamove MD Jane Teh said the company succeeded in achieving the highest number of monthly deliveries last year, which doubled 2020’s.

Currently, it has served up to 25,000 active consumer and SME users, surpassing their total active user in 2020 by around 152% and managing to deliver more than 12 million orders with the number of active drivers growing double of 2020’s.

“In 2022, we will be launching our on-demand delivery services to more cities locally and facilitating our long-haul delivery services.

“Other than that, we are also looking forward to expanding our current delivery fleet to ensure we have sufficient delivery partners to meet today’s customers and business demand, while providing more income opportunities to the local driver community,” added Teh.

Lalamove expanded its delivery coverage to Johor and Penang back in April last year, with the use of larger vans and lorries to meet the delivery needs of bulkier items, and launched its long-haul delivery services to allow same-day delivery from the Klang Valley to Johor and Penang.

Deutsche Post DHL Group as a whole more than doubled its key performance indicators compared to the previous year up until the third quarter of 2021 (3Q21).

“We have already exceeded our 2020 earnings and we are currently consolidating results from the Christmas quarter, which is traditionally stronger,” DHL Express Malaysia and Brunei MD Julian Neo said.

“We are feeling the upturn in the global economy especially at DHL Express. Volume growth in the previous year was strongly influenced by private consumption via e-commerce and the response to the pandemic — ie the transport of personal protective equipment or to maintain supply chains. We are now seeing roaring trade from almost all sectors of industry and in almost all regions of the world,” he said.

DHL’s top priority in Malaysia is to invest heavily in the expansion and modernisation of its infrastructure including RM11.4 million to improve its last-mile delivery efficiency with new additions to the vehicle fleet, as well as RM7.4 million to boost processing, sorting and distribution with focus on equipment overhaul nationwide.

It is also allocating RM13 million and RM198.7 million respectively for the relocation of the Seberang Perai and Kuala Lumpur Gateway locations to bigger premises to expand shipment handling capacity and productivity.

AirAsia Delivery also registered positive performance in 2021.

Lim Ben Jie, the head of delivery (e-commerce) at AirAsia Super App, said: “In 2021, we have four businesses under the delivery vertical of

the AirAsia super app which is the AirAsia Food, AirAsia Ride, AirAsia Xpress and AirAsia Grocer.”

AirAsia Delivery will be expanding its services more in Malaysia, with plans to also expand in Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore in 1Q22 and 2Q22.

Malaysia’s first bike e-hailing service provider, Dego, meanwhile said it has pivoted its business model and changef into a delivery service provider, and is now slowly growing its business and brand reputation. The e-hailing bike service was no longer allowed in 2020 due to safety concerns.

“Our performance this year is better than 2020 where we improved a lot due to the easing of restrictions. Now, Malaysians are willing to use our service more,” said Nabil Feisal Bamadhaj, the founder and CEO of Dego.

“The first eight-month period in 2020 we focused more on motorcycle taxi, but from July onwards we switched to delivery services. Currently, we have upgraded the app and made improvements from our 2020 customer feedback. From there, we managed to get customer to expand (their) business with us by using our service as the medium of delivery,” he added.

In 2022, Dego intends to grow the business more by providing electrical vehicles (EVs) for its fleet of riders, besides planning to build infrastructure to power the EVs in a drive-through facility with charging points.