The projection was made after the overall positive growth of the e-commerce biz during the implementation of MCO last year, CEO says 

by S BIRRUNTHA / Pic by BERNAMA

THE Malaysia Automotive Robotics and IoT Institute (MARii) has announced the development of its two e-commerce platforms, Unified E-commerce Initiative and E-commerce Marketplace. 

CEO Datuk Madani Sahari (picture) said MARii is targeting a sales value of RM100 million per month from the two latest and locally made e-commerce platforms this year. 

He added that the projection was made by looking at the overall positive growth of the e-commerce business during the implementation of Movement Control Order (MCO) last year. 

“We believe this trend will provide great benefits to local entrepreneurs. 

“We target that at least 10,000 companies will be registered in these two new e-commerce platforms in the next three months with sales of RM100 million every month,” he said in a press conference after the announcement at MARii’s headquarters in Cyberjaya on Monday. 

Commenting further, Madani said the initiative was very important because all this time e-commerce sites in Malaysia are actually based and operate directly from abroad. 

He emphasised that this situation can be risky as all business transaction data as well as personal information of Malaysian customers are stored abroad and can be easily exploited by certain parties. 

“In line with the government’s National E-commerce Strategic Roadmap, they serve as stepping stones for new business models, including mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) based businesses to bridge their business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) networks, and expand their markets to their right audience,” he noted. 

According to Madani, the Unified E-commerce Initiative enables the development of various aspects of e-commerce based on the Unified Commerce strategy. 

He said this initiative places backend commerce elements such as procurement, enterprise and manufacturing resource planning, accounting, payment gateways, logistics, inventory, product information and warehouse management all under one system, using the MARii Cloud Web Services that was established by MARii in 2020.

Meanwhile, the E-commerce Marketplace is a platform which will be configured to deliver a customised retail and service environment for automotive and mobilitybased businesses.

“This is in line with the National Automotive Policy (NAP) 2020 to develop MaaS and integrate new business types into the current automotive sector such as sharing concepts, multimodal transportation, e-payments, connected living and telematics,” he added. 

Madani highlighted that both initiatives are developed to assist entrepreneurs within the e-commerce ecosystem, gearing towards opportunities for market expansion locally and internationally, in line with the NAP 2020. 

During the same event, MARii also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PH Empire Holding Bhd on the enhancement of the Shopker e-commerce platform. 

Through the MoU, both parties agree to develop required technologies to support e-commerce activities including B2B, B2C, consumerto-consumer and consumer-tobusiness. 

The development includes initiatives to enhance discovery of local products and services, as well as the expansion of automotive and technology-based vendors within the Shopker vendor list.