Source: Digital News Asia
By Anushia Kandasivam | Feb 12, 2018
WEB-based parcel consolidator and e-commerce shipping solutions provider EasyParcel has achieved 100% year-on-year revenue growth from 2016 to 2017.
Co-founder and chief executive officer Clarence Leong says that the Malaysia-based startup did not expect this level of growth but its focus on its team and strategy has paid off.
Last year, EasyParcel in a partnership with press and convenience retail chain Bison Consolidated Bhd launched Pgeon, a service that facilitates last mile delivery to all users of postal services.
Pgeon provides postal users with the option of having their parcels dropped off or collected at convenience stores nationwide. When EasyParcel and Bison first announced their partnership in February last year, Pgeon had all myNEWS.com outlets in Malaysia on its books (320 outlets at the time).
Now, Leong reveals that besides myNews.com the Pgeon service also uses 99 Speedmart and will be launching more Pgeon points soon.
“This growth is not something we expected to achieve so soon, as we only launched the pilot in February last year. This is one of the key achievements we’ve had for PGEON,” says Leong.
Besides Malaysia, EasyParcel and Pgeon are already in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. According to Leong, the startup’s focus for this year will be to continue growth in the countries it is already present in instead of opening in new markets.
“We want to see how we do well in Malaysia and figure out how to replicate it in the other countries. The secret sauce is already there, so now we just need to replicate and grow,” he says.
For effective implementation, the business models and strategies will have to be tweaked a little for localisation, which will be handled by the local teams in each country. Leong says that as each local team serves its customers in customer support and sales, they will know what the market needs and what will work.
Leong also reveals that EasyParcel is gearing up for a Series B funding round, which it aims to close by June. The funds will be used to support the startup’s growth plans.
In the last year, EasyParcel has also grown its team to more than 100 people across the four countries; Leong says that another major focus of the startup has been recruiting the right people to aid in the business’ growth.
Interestingly, even with staff of more than 100, Leong still considers EasyParcel a startup. It certainly is still a startup in terms of age – it is about three-and-a-half years old. Leong believes that it is still a startup in terms of mentality, culture and attitude.
“You need to always be agile enough to switch and change to match what your customers actually need. We are in an era where things move so fast, especially in e-commerce, so you need to have that ability to always change for the better.”
EasyParcel seems to have a clear runway for the growth it wants to achieve this year. There are similar businesses with similar products and services across the region but Leong opines that the market is big enough for even more businesses doing the same thing.
“It’s been proven that what works in Malaysia also works in other countries, so when the competition is starting a similar thing in another country it proves that it’s a really good market that we can also explore,” he says.
