Olivia Quah Invited to Speak as a Panel Speaker at World Business Angel Week ("WBAW") Malaysia 2022

Our Co-Founder of Asian Integrated Medical Sdn Bhd (iElder.asia), Olivia Quah is invited to speak at the upcoming World Business Angel Week (Malaysia) on 23rd June 2022 from 3pm - 5pm Malaysia time.

Please feel free to join us and register at https://bit.ly/WBAW2022MY

Good afternoon everyone, my name is Olivia Quah, co-founder and marketing director of Asian Integrated Medical Sdn. Bhd, also known as AIM Healthcare, and founder of the ecommerce platform - www.iElder.asia.

Thank you for inviting me as a speaker for today’s webinar. Today, I’ll be sharing how iElder.asia has tackled business Transformation in Malaysia, and our efforts in Rebuilding, Sustaining and Scaling Up with Digitalization.

iElder.asia deals in the supply and distribution of medical products and equipment, focusing on elderly care. We are distributor to nursing home, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and corporate clients. During the pandemic and post-pandemic periods, our company has adopted the omnichannel strategy, which is a method that helps us create a seamless experience for customers - as most customers who buy medical products still want to touch and feel the product before making a purchase. Many of our customers also survey our medical products online in advance, creating the need for online and offline touchpoints of our brand of products. Hence, we created a point-of-sale system in the form of our ecommerce platform - www.iElder.asia to complete the whole sales cycle.

For our offline setup, we've set up 2 new brick and mortar showrooms this year. One of the showrooms is designed in a home or nursing home setup, where we display recommended elderly care products in their respective living spaces, such as the bedroom, bathroom, dining room, and living hall. We have use digital platform to do live demo of series of products in each living spaces. The other showroom is set up in a private hospital healthcare facility at KPJ Tawakkal Kuaal Lumpur. We’re always identifying strategic locations to showcase our quality and signature products, and participate in various medical expos to showcase our products, and to stay informed by visiting and learning from our peers within the industry. In term of product selection, comfort and quality as priority criteria for us to bring in the brand to the market. For example, German made Wissner Bosserhoff Sentida bed, Japan Brand Kawamura wheelchair and Award winning Sweden Etac commode range of products.

For our online presence,

Other than Facebook, SEO and Google advertising, we frequently conduct livestreams on Facebook live and engage KOLs to sell and share about our products online. Recently, we’ve noticed Tiktok as a platform with the potential to be an uptrend app, and have started to post more educational videos on Tiktok - How to transfer patients correctly, how to determine the proper height for walkers and toilet risers, and even exercise tutorials for the elderly..
As a medical equipment supply company, the main challenge we face as a digitally focused business is that many of our customers would rather view our products in person. With currently over 600 different varieties of products, it’s very difficult for us to display everything in our brick and mortar stores. To counter this limitation, we provide as much information as we can about each and every product on our online stores: product dimensions, material information, product weight, medical product registration information, packaging and shipping information, etcetera. We also conduct live video demonstrations on how to use various products in different living spaces. However, it will require more time before consumers become truly comfortable with a purely online experience. We are continuously looking into improvements to enhance online interaction and engagement, such as 360-degree cameras and possibly AR or VR technology.

We not only want to have an online presence in Malaysia. We are keen to expand our online presence in 1-3 years time in neighboring countries such as Indonesia, Singapore and Australia, with the adoption of the omnichannel strategy.

With consistent effort, our company was shortlisted for Malaysia's Top Ecommerce Merchant Award in 2021 (last year).


To have a sustainable business, we work closely with our strategic partners

To spread out our brand presence, we have been working closely with reputable universities. An example would be the R.A.I project that we signed the MOU with Monash University earlier this year, a project that aims to help to transform regular homes into well-equipped spaces where the elderly can live their everyday lives in a safe and comfortable environment.
We conduct networking activities with associations such as NAWEM, Malaysian Coalition on Ageing MCOA, Agecope, HKMBA, NCAS, BNI and many other healthcare and aged care associations.

We also act as marketing arm with a spin-off company from University Malaya, headed by a geriatrician under Prof Tan Maw Pin, to market senior-related assessment programmes.

We also conduct educational webinars regularly with NGOs such as Malaysian Parkinson’s Disease Association and Alzheimer's Disease Foundation Malaysia, and are working on creating more hybrid events post-pandemic.

During the pandemic, our medical product sales picked up. We took this blessing and opportunity to give back to the community via CSR programmes to distribute covid essential care packs to aged care homes with partners MyAgeing, Agecope, U3A and NCAS, and also provided free rental for oxygen concentrators to aged care centers as well.

Staffing

For staffing, we keep our core team small and focused, and engage many specialists such as 3rd party service providers for certain aspects of our operations. I believe that in order to provide the best quality and service to our customers, we need to have a pool of experienced professionals in their respective industries. Once we engage a provider that meets our expectations for quality, we continue working with the same providers and treat them as our trusted partners. This allows our team to focus on improving and growing our business. This way we make sure our team gets enough rest, so we can work hard and play hard, with a light and healthy heart and mind.

Staff are required to attend classes such as the MDec and Sidec digital skill programme, Matrade export programme and NAWEM entrepreneur programme.

The world we live in now is a world that relies heavily on smart devices and the internet, not just for leisure, but for work, and many of our essential, everyday services. The recent pandemic forced many Malaysians that were reluctant to shop online to adapt to new trends, and as a result, the eCommerce revenue in Malaysia increased by 37%, reaching a total of $4 billion in 2020. I truly believe that E-commerce is the way forward, and that the future will be a world where everything will be done online.

Of course, some critics will say that the e-commerce space is filled with competition. I believe that other care-providers and businesses within the healthcare industry are peers, not competitors, and that we benefit more from working together and learning from one another, instead of keeping to ourselves. When we grow stronger together, we inevitably bring better service to the community, as well, so it isn’t just business owners who benefit. Peer-to-peer socialization has helped us create many opportunities, partnerships and collaborations, and has helped iElder achieve big things that we could never have achieved alone.

Today, as we slowly start moving into the new post-pandemic norm, it doesn’t mean that we are taking a step backwards, but rather, into a new, slightly altered society, where facemasks in the street and managing our shopping online are the new normal. We cannot stop trends or fight against the world as it progresses forward, but what we can and should do, is change along with it.

That's the end my sharing today. Thank you

What do you want to share with audience?
Embrace with change positively- The core definition of embracing change refers to cultivating an attitude of accepting change as a positive development and integrating it in your life without fear. I don’t like to do livestream, I prefer to sit behind and support someone in front. But now I have to embrace change to be frontliner to speak and do livestream and tiktok as adapt to current trend.