By Sherilyn Pang
PETALING JAYA, March 10 — One hundred small traders seeking to transition their businesses online will get a digital boost with the Kg Tunku Digital Micro-Entrepreneurs Initiative launched today.
Kampung Tunku state assemblyman Lim Yi Wei said the initiative provides confidence for small business owners to take on the digital shift and expand their businesses.
“I would say it is actually a fear of the learning curve. What we often hear from SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) or small-timers is they don’t know where or how to get started.
“They know people are already selling on Lazada and Shopee, but they don’t know where to get started and sometimes they don’t know if there is a market for their goods,” Lim told Selangor Journal when met after the launch of the first phase of the digital initiative at the Awegallery in Section 20, here today.
“So these all feed into the bigger picture where products can transition online but the traders need a leg-up. They need the know-how of tying up all the elements together and be able to access the market, especially during times when movement is restricted.”
Lim said that the initiative would also help prepare applicants to participate in the Selangor government’s various festive e-bazaar initiatives, which had contributed towards assisting many SMEs to sell their products and services online despite the movement control order (MCO) amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Yezza head of merchants Rahiim Khamaruzaman explained that its e-commerce software would assist small business owners to sell and manage their businesses on Whatsapp.
“We assist merchants in terms of delivery, quoting the right price and helping them market their products better.
“The Yezza system is able to automate manual processes concerned with doing businesses such as receiving high volume of orders and organising the delivery of goods to customers and so on and so forth,” Rahiim explained.
The features on Yezza include Smart Link, WhatsApp-form with auto-generated database and leads delegation system; Yezza Store, a lightweight e-commerce website; Yezza Pay, a payment gateway with 1-minute setup and transaction fee from as low as RM1 per transaction; report and analytics capabilities to track business, team and product performance as well as customer, order and inventory management systems.
The digital initiative is a constituency-level digitalisation programme worth a total of RM11,100, which is open to micro traders and SMEs operating in Petaling Jaya.
For the first phase, the initiative has been opened to 38 women-owned businesses in conjunction with International Women’s Day, of which the deadline will be on March 17.
The second leg of the initiative for the remaining 62 spots will be announced in April for which the application period is from April 5 – 16.
Those interested can submit their applications at https://adunkgtunku.yzza.io/dme.
