| Danial Norjidi |
THE topic of enabling access to the digital economy took centre stage as the 1st MSME Innovation Conference and Expo was held yesterday.
The conference featured prominent and successful entrepreneurs from the region who were invited to talk about how small enterprises can leverage on e-commerce and the vast opportunities it presents to further develop their businesses.
It was aimed at showing that products and services can be sold online to a market beyond Brunei as well as to increase the awareness of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to utilise e-commerce platforms and look into venturing into e-commerce support services such as payment gateway and logistics. It was also aimed at showing MSMEs can also be a part of the global value chain through e-commerce.
The objectives of the conference are in line with the determination and effort of the Government of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam to empower the private sector, especially the local MSMEs to explore and expand their market reach by leveraging on existing regional and international trade mediums such as the BIMP-EAGA and Asean and even beyond.
The proceedings saw a keynote address delivered by Javed Ahmad, the CEO of DARe (Darussalam Enterprise).
An overview of the MSME Innovation Conference and Expo panel discussion at the BRIDEX International Conference Centre. – AZROL AZMI
“We now live in a world that was once thought possible where everything you want to know about is at your fingertips using the World Wide Web. With e-commerce, a click of a button, an URL, and a secure e-payment gateway, all these variables open up the opportunities to businesses anywhere in the world to customers globally, and not just in their home markets.
“As a business living in today’s modern day society, online presence is a must, as your entire global market is now available on your mobile phone.”
He went on to share that when we talk about innovation, generally there is a feeling of apprehension among small business, and a bit of concern in terms of what small businesses offer to the business community at large.
“In reality, if you look at small businesses, they are the ones who have been leading innovation over the last 20-30 years,” he highlighted. “If you look at large businesses, they are struggling with coming to terms with the unleashing of the huge potential that’s going on around the world, and they’re struggling in terms of how they cope with it.
“Unfortunately what’s happening is that a lot of established businesses, particularly the large businesses around the world, are too much entrenched into their own investments, into their own customer base, into their own commitments that it is virtually impossible for them to move to the next phase in terms of opportunities.”
He noted that generally a very familiar discussion in boardrooms is “if we go to a particular market segment, are we cannibalising our own customer base?”
“The moment you have that thought in terms of cannibalisation, you’ll never have the opportunity to go out and innovate, and here comes the opportunity for the MSMEs to truly go out and innovate,” he said.
He touched on examples of innovation, noting the launch of Brunei’s first taxi booking app, DART Taxi, on Friday, as well as AirBnB. “These are not businesses created by the hotel industry or the automobile industry. These are individuals who had a vision and the ability to look at some of these and come up with truly innovative solutions.”
Several well-known international e-commerce platforms such as DHGate, eBBQ, Facebook, Ogilvy and Avana as well as local names such as Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam, 3G Media, Mumtaz Collection, CubeJunction, Storkitani, and Bruvera were invited to share their experience and knowledge as well as their experience in building loyalty, growth and brand equity.
The conference saw number of presentations, speeches and panel sessions, discussing topics such as ‘eCommerce: Understanding Potential Opportunities and Challenges’, ‘eCommerce Platform Opportunities in Brunei’, ‘eCommerce, ePayments, eCommerce: Enabling Brunei to Asean’, ‘eCommerce for today’s Digital Industry” and ‘Logistics in the 21st Century’.
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