Shopping roadmap
There is no need to get lost in malls anymore, writes
ALTHOUGH Malaysians love the mall culture, there seems to be so many of them these days. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some kind of mall directory where you can find whatever you want online before heading out to a mall?
They say there’s an app for everything and sure enough, there is one for searching malls.
It’s called MallDash and it was founded by former investment banker Andrew Foo, who left London to seek his fortunes in Malaysia.
WHAT WAS YOUR MAIN MOTIVATION FOR RETURNING TO MALAYSIA?
Like many other UK graduates, it was my goal to work in London and I was fortunate to be able to get a job with JP Morgan. After a couple of years learning and working with the best people in the industry, I decided to take a leap of faith to pursue opportunities in the startups space here. Malaysia is a relatively “Blue Ocean” market for startups and there’s plenty of uncharted territories. There are many gaps to be filled.
WHAT IS MALLDASH IN A NUTSHELL?
You could say MallDash is the Google and Waze for shopping malls in Malaysia. Through MallDash, you can search for anything inside a mall. We map out all the floors in a mall so that shoppers can find their preferred store easily. In this day and age, shoppers should be able to search for anything they want in the malls. That’s the solution we hope to provide.
HOW DID THE IDEA FOR MALLDASH COME TO YOU?
Actually the concept just came up during a conversation with a friend who thought that it would be a good idea if there were a Waze for shopping malls.
ARE YOU A BIG FAN OF SHOPPING MALLS YOURSELF?
Absolutely! I visit at least two malls a week — not for work purposes but because I just like it. I go to the mall to catch up with friends, get my weekly groceries and check out the latest fashion trends.
WHAT WERE THE KEY THINGS YOU HAD TO DO WHEN YOU STARTED THIS BUSINESS?
I had to do plenty of market research to validate this business proposition. We reached out to more than 1,000 shoppers for feedback to understand their main pain points and how we could use technology to enhance their shopping mall experience.
ARE THERE SIMILAR APPS OUT THERE WHICH YOU CONSIDER TO BE YOUR COMPETITORS?
I know of one or two companies that tried to do a mall directory but they didn’t go far because you can only search the name of the store and not items inside the store. Other than that, there are mall apps from the likes of 1Utama, Sunway Pyramid, IOI City Mall but these are mall-specific apps. From a consumer’s point of view, would you prefer to download 50 different malls apps or just one app for all the malls in the city? That’s the value we’re providing to our users.
WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOU FACED IN BUILDING THIS BUSINESS?
I’d say it’s educating the mall owners and tenants about the value of something like this. There are no mall search engines out there so this is something new to them. We had to spend time educating the market of the power of investing in a search engine for malls.
WERE THERE THINGS YOU WANTED TO DO WITH THE APP THAT HAD TO BE SCRAPPED?
drew a roadmap with over 100 different functionalities we wanted to see on the app but as we worked on it, we modified certain things and scrapped certain things. But we’re constantly fine-tuning the app. To date, we have iterated and enhanced the app over 70 times, making it more powerful each time and ensuring the best user experience for our users.
WHAT EXACTLY CAN PEOPLE SEARCH ON IT?
At present, shoppers can search across all store information including store promotions, credit card offers, mall events, restaurant menus, and hair salon listings. In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out our Stock Keeping Unit search where shoppers would be able to search all individual stock items, including the name of the stock item and their prices.
HOW MANY MALLS AND SHOPS DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR DATABASE?
When we first started, we onboarded the top 50 malls in Peninsula Malaysia. This includes information on 13,000 shops and more than 3,000 store promotions in our database. We plan to onboard more malls this year.
WHAT’S THE BUSINESS MODEL?
We charge malls a listing fee to be listed on the MallDash platform and we also charge individual retailers for advertisements and search rankings on our app.
ANY PLANS TO EXPAND ABROAD?
Yes, Singapore is next. Besides being in close proximity to Malaysia, Singapore has one of the highest concentrations of shopping malls in the world. Take Orchard Road, for instance. There are over 20 malls within a two-kilometre radius and Singapore has the highest spending per capita in this region. So it makes sense for us to expand to Singapore in the near future.
WHAT ROLE DO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND BIG DATA PLAY?
Being a tech company, our core revolves around AI and Big Data. In terms of the latter, we house all shopping mall information, including all store information, promotions, events and individual stock items. We use AI and machine learning to manage these data, tailoring them to each of our user’s preference.
For instance, if a MallDash female user likes cosmetics and tends to browse all cosmetic-related promotion and stores, her search result will show more cosmetic-related results giving her a more personalised user experience when browsing on the MallDash platform.
ARE YOU ONLY DOING THIS BUSINESS OR ARE THERE OTHER PROJECTS THAT YOU’RE INVOLVED IN?
There are three areas that I’m deeply passionate about: Fashion, Finance and Food. You could call them the three “Fs”. I have a few business ideas related to these things that I’d love to explore, especially within the social enterprise construct. I’m motivated to find solutions to problems facing the communities around me. However, at present, my focus is to scale MallDash up regionally and to find monetisation avenues for the business.