“The salient factor for success in this new landscape is adaptability” expressed Muhammad Fahad Mahmood, Chief Executive Officer, Decagon Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited – GoLootlo, during an exclusive Q&A session with our Editor in Chief on the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on overall economy and digital financial services landscape in Pakistan.
1. How this crisis will change digital financial services?
The proliferation of COVID-19 is a truly path-altering event for the world. For Pakistan and many countries, it will become the catalyst for widespread adoption of digital financial services. There is a tremendous demand for contactless payment systems, making it more important than ever to transition to digital finance in a country intransigent in adopting cashless solutions.
That’s rapidly changing however, as an increasing number of individuals and companies are opting for cashless options. Corroborating this fact are the newest numbers from 1Link which reports a 67% rise in average daily IBFT transactions in lock-down days, hitting a peak of almost 500K transactions per day. The cashless revolution in Pakistan has already begun.
2. How payment landscape will change and how important is to encourage customers to use digital channels?
With people trying to avoid cash, contactless payments will be the obvious go-to in the coming future. While touching cash may not directly transfer the virus that easily, the close proximity physical interaction during which cash changes hands can enable the spread, and should be avoided if possible. Hence, it’s imperative for everyone’s health and safety that consumers start switching to cashless solutions.
Over the next few months, there will be a significant push towards wider adoption of digital financial services. More consumers will progressively embrace mobile wallets and adopt contactless payment techniques that do not require physical interaction.
3. How are you helping partners and customers cope with this crisis?
Golootlo is trying to help consumers and merchants both with its G-delivery service. In this trying time, many merchants are struggling to stay afloat due to the lock-down. With delivery the only means of business during the lock-down, quite a few smaller merchants who depended on walk-ins were straining to generate orders.
To aid with this, Golootlo is providing those merchants a platform to showcase their products, and is using its board reach and marketing might to drive customers to those merchants. Customers are getting access to the products they love and merchants are getting the orders that they so desperately require. As a way to facilitate merchants even more, Golootlo is charging zero platform fee to the merchants for orders generated through the Golootlo app, a practice which is unprecedented in similar platforms and apps.
Additionally, in a bid to help the people of Pakistan, Golootlo has partnered with the Government of Pakistan to drive millions of people to donate to the Prime Minister’s Corona Relief Fund. The fund has been established for the aid of individuals and families severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
Leveraging its technical expertise, Golootlo has also developed the official website for the Prime Minister’s Corona Relief Fund pro bono for the Government. The website is functioning as the central platform for collecting donations from both local & overseas Pakistanis.
4. In terms of business growth, what challenges and opportunities you see during the current crisis period?
With the closing of retail outlets, our main method of transactions, QR scans through the app have slowed down to a crawl. This is the core challenge we’re facing right now. Hence, retaining customers is an uphill battle due to extremely minimized engagement.
However, we’ve rapidly adapted and shifted more of our customers towards the G-delivery platform. We’ve seen a considerable increase in delivery orders via the app over the past two months. The numbers are steadily increasing and have grown to unprecedented levels.
Over the month of Ramadan, we’ve also kept customers engaged on the app with the integration of Golootlo on one of the season’s most viewed shows, Jeeto Pakistan. We’ve provided them with the chance to win 1 lakh rupees Eidi daily, answer entertaining questions for incorporation into the show and much more. This has led to tremendous daily engagement on our app during a time when the landscape made that difficult to achieve.
5. In your opinion, what is the best way to reach out to your customers and to re-engage them in order to stand by them at this point in time?
In the post-COVID-19 landscape, digital is the key tool to engage customers. Most brands realize this, and this is reflected by the huge influx of new brands utilizing digital marketing as a means to connect to the customers.
As connecting to customers via traditional marketing channels has drastically diminished in effectiveness, it’s become imperative for companies to be agile and rapidly transition to contemporary methods instead. The different digital channels are unbelievably powerful tools to get new customers and re-engage older ones and with a robust digital strategy, brands can definitely hold their own even in this trying time. Those who adapt – will overcome.
