Selangor awards local auto businesses with grants to go digital

By ramieza, 09 July 2021

As is the case for most businesses in a pandemic-stricken world, adopting digital solutions seems to be the way forward for auto manufacturers and services in Malaysia to stay afloat on the back of one restriction after another.

The Selangor state government has been particularly supportive of businesses going digital. Earlier this year, it launched an initiative called Selangor Information Technology and Digital Economy Corporation (Sidec) to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to digitalise their traditional economy.

Looking deeper into automotive industries, Yong Kai Ping, CEO of Sidec said: “We received 492 applications from the first batch which started from 15 April to 15 June 2021. 280 applications met the criteria and successfully applied for the grant. For the first batch, eight automotive companies’ applications were approved.”

Yong added that it is important to cultivate high-impact automotive industries that will contribute to innovation, job creation and new wealth as well as having a positive impact on the society.

While Malaysia has wider social media usage at 70.5 per cent, Yong stated that SMEs’ usage of digitalisation is still below par.
 

“For example, the best performing area of digitalisation is finance and accounting. According to the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), it stands at 50.2 per cent. The other areas such as Human Resources (HR), inventory and customer relationship management are below 30 per cent. Given that 20 per cent of SMEs are concentrated in Selangor, it is still a long way for SME digitalisation including the automotive industry.” 

However, Sidec strives to help SME digitalisation take off in the state in collaboration with other players in the ecosystem such as digital service providers, state and federal agencies and SMEs.

Those who are interested in applying for the Selangor state government grant can log on to the Sidec official website for more information. 

Digitalisation of automotive businesses 

As we understand that the digitalisation of automotive businesses is still slow, however there are companies that has already make their first move and that is Pomen. 

Pomen is a platform that connects drivers with nearby workshops; the app has features to cater to both parties involved. 

According to Syed Zulhilmi Tuan Sharif, co-founder and CEO of Pomen, the digitalisation of automotive industries in Malaysia is slacking.

“Digitalisation in the after-market, we are still at the very beginning and overall, we need to catch up fast in order to make other operations smooth and be more digital,” said Syed in an interview with TopGear Malaysia.

pomen
pomen

Furthermore, Nazmi Najib co-founder and CTO of the same company added that digitalisation becomes an eye opener to almost every industry after the pandemic hits.

“Due to Covid-19, people start to realise the importance of going digital, hence why we built this application in order to help others, especially workshops to move forward,” he said.

 
 

didigo
didigo

The one is DidiGo. It is a lifestyle application that was formed for a consortium of workshops under a single platform as a one-stop car maintenance service centre catering to most vehicles and drivers.

Sean Yiap, founder of DidiGO mentioned that: “The application that launched this April is to digitalise the traditional workshop and, in the meantime, provide convenience to car owners.”

Yiap agreed that Malaysia is far behind when it comes to digitalisation of automotive industries. However, there is a positive increase of people considering changing their ways of doing business after the pandemic.

“Everybody now is aware and there is also a lot of demand from other workshops that seek our help to go digital. It is a positive start to change the way of business as people are being more adaptable with the current situation,” he added.