Planet Kuching

While still a relatively new market, food delivery services are actually present in Kuching.

One such provider is Planet Kuching Sdn Bhd (Planet Kuching). Initially started by Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus student Wasiq from Pakistan, Planet Kuching had at first catered mostly to university students, particularly the international students studying at Swinburne.

This was due to the fact that most of the students back then did not have their own transportation to get around. They were always looking for people to go out and help them buy food.

Planet Kuching president Kent Kho recalled that Wasiq launched the Planet Kuching Venture in March 2016. Back in Lahore, Pakistan, Wasiq had already started something similar to Planet Kuching before coming here and setting up the food delivery business.

“I got to know him before he started the business. I helped him to analyse the business, I’m always interested in helping young people to pursue something as they are very energetic and businessminded. “He was studying Computer Science and for a Computer Science student to have this kind of business mindset, I think it is wonderful,” Kho said.

That was why Kho helped him to set up Planet Kuching as a company and joined this business venture as a partner.

“When we first started, as Wasiq is Muslim, we served only halal food in the beginning,” he said. “We were so busy in the beginning and in one night, we can receive 100 plus orders and the riders were very busy, coming in and out of the Swinburne hostel.”

Kho said currently, Wasiq is looking into augmented reality like Pokemon Go and applying this concept to their current business model, something which users in Kuching can look forward to in the future.

As to what inspired Kho to venture into a food delivery service like Planet Kuching, he explained that he is more into helping to equip and train young people how to run a business.

“For myself, I’ve been doing online business since 1999. My first online business was with yahoo. com, my passion is always in online business.

“I’m more interested in the platform, building it up and my idea in the beginning is to create this platform to help home-based businesses. There are a lot of homebased businesses. My idea is to set up this platfrom and to let all the home-based businesses to be able to sell online.”

Generally, Kho believes that there is a big potential in conducting online businesses.

He gave an example of a cafe which through Planet Kuching’s delivery service, the food and beverage (F&B) outlet can actually deliver its business all the way to Kota Samarahan and Samariang because Planet Kuching’s coverage is 30 kilometres from the town.

“It’s all about how you can make use of online marketing and social media marketing to sell your goods around town.”

Kho has likened running a food delivery service to a combination of running Lazada and Poslaju.

As with Lazada, which has to invest in the systems that needs to be constantly updated, he said that this is the same with Planet Kuching.

“We are the only company that has both website and mobile app, we can have the luxury of having both. That is one cost for us, where a major chunk of money goes to,” he explained on the costs incurred managing both the website and mobile app.

“All other industries can leverage on Lazada or other online platforms to do well but not the food industry. At Planet Kuching, we want to be the Lazada of food industry through food delivery and social media marketing.”

“The other thing would be the ‘Poslaju’ side, meaning the riders. We need to have a lot of riders to be able to support the business. On average, we have about 10 riders and they will take turns to come in and deliver.” Demand for services higher than expected

According to Kho, when they first started Planet Kuching, they thought only international students needed this kind of services because they do not have cars themselves.

“When Swinburne closed for holidays, our orders went from 100 plus to less than 20 a day,” he said.

“We had to look for customers outside of Swinburne. Once we started expanding our customer base to outside of Swinburne, we were surprised that the demand for food delivery is actually present.

“Yes, a lot of people say that Kuching people do not need this kind of service but to our surpise, we have customers that have asked us to deliver all the way to Samariang, UNIMAS and UITM.

“This shows a need for our services. They are willing to pay extra delivery charges just to have the food delivered to their houses or schools.” Testing the system in Kuching, plans to sell overseas

Kho also explained that Planet Kuching is more of a testbed for the company as they are testing the system here in the city, with plans to sell the system overseas.

“I’m more interested in the platform, building it up and my idea in the beginning is to create this platform to help home-based businesses. There are a lot of homebased businesses. My idea is to set up this platfrom and to let all the home-based businesses to be able to sell online.” Kent Kho, Planet Kuching president

“Kuching is a place for us to test a lot of ideas and to come up with a system,” he said.

“Like now, with Planet Kuching, I can go to KL and I can compete with Food Panda and others because we already have the strategies on how to run a business that can compete with others.

“I spent a good two years to analyse the business and in order for us to sell the system, we need to have a system that can compete with the big players.” Non-food delivery spinoff

From Planet Kuching ’ s original website, which just entai led a one- page form submission for food orders, the company discovered that there was a demand in Kuching for non- food delivereies.

“The old website, we still have it, and along the way we got a lot of requests for nonfood delivery. That’s why we have a Planet Kuching spinoff now called PKXpress,” he explained.

“In the past, we had customers that asked us to go to Poslaju to pick up packages. All they had to do was send us pictures of their notice and we will go pick up the packages for you.

“We also had customer orders requesting us to go get pet food. The more interesting one was customers asking us to go to shoe shop Bata to buy shoes. Other interesting requests involved going to H& M a few times to purchase pants, purse and others.”

Kho found that this non-food delivery service is convenient for people who are stuck in the office and do not have time to go out.

“You can basically pick up anything in Kuching through PKXpress. We see a big demand in this.”

PKXpress is targeting corporate customers, lawyers, accountants, shipping companies and many more. It is aiming to assist those who have to deal with a lot of invoices and documents which need to be sent back and forth around the Kuching.

According to PKXpress sales and marketing director Jong Tien Siang, this delivery service can also helps companies reduce manpower costs.

“We understand that for each company, the most difficult thing to manage is human resources or staf f. In this regard, we thought through how to solve such problems and that’s where PKXpress comes in.”

Jong went on to note that this service is convenient for companies that do not have dispatch workers under their employment.

PKXpress can also be accessed via both its website or mobile app.

Kho noted that besides nonfood deliveries, riders have even gone to supermarkets to buy things for customers.

On that note, he highlighted that for Planet Kuching, they will also add the supermarket option later on into the system.

“The next time, you can just go to Planet Kuching to order groceries to be delivered to you.”