Reinventing The Advertising Industry
In early March, 11 companies were chosen to receive an investment of RM250,000 (US$61,844) each to grow their business regionally from Scale Up Malaysia and Quest Ventures.
ScaleUp Malaysia’s Cohort 2 key partner, Quest Ventures is a regional venture capital firm based out of Singapore that counts Temasek as one of their key investors. With more than 50 investments under their belt, Quest Ventures’ investments boast regional powerhouses like Carousell, 99.co and Carro.
Head’s Up will be interviewing all 11 chosen startups to discuss further on the challenges they face as a startup to grow regionally and how the investment will impact their journey moving forward.
Second in the list is MyBump Media, an advertising technology platform powered by the crowd to provide brands with 360° reach. Chief Executive Officer, Nadia Jalil and Chief Operating Officer, Dhanish Athif share their journey and how they plan to utilise the investment to grow further.
If you missed the first interview with Quadby, click here.
Can you share more about your startup and what has the journey been like?
MyBump Media is an advertising technology platform powered by the crowd providing 360° reach for brands with data driven execution and performance analytics. Our services range from outdoor advertising using car wrap ads, wearable ads and online through social media endorsements and consumer feedback/surveys. We have one simple vision; to help everyday people earn through advertising, anywhere and anyhow.
MyBump Media was founded in 2016 as a platform with socio-economic impact in line with the nation building aspirations of Khazanah Nasional through Project Brainchild or also known as Project KNEO (Khazanah Nasional Entrepreneurship Outreach), a pre-accelerator program. We aspire to provide continuous passive income for everyone through advertising.
Our journey has been a rewarding one from the success milestones and the valuable learnings through overcoming multiple failures. As a two sided platform, we service both brand owners and our ambassadors (registered users comprising of everyday people) via our technology platform and ensuring delivery of our services with value, efficiency, automation and performance metrics. To date we have given back over half a million ringgit to our ambassadors as passive income for advertising. We believe sustainable advertising can be achieved with innovation and industry support.
Were you confident of getting selected to receive the investment?
Honestly, we were quite unsure if we'd be selected! We've been faced with rejections before including feedback like 'come again when you're doing better' to 'I don't believe this works'. Over time we've prepped ourselves for any outcome and taken rejections as another challenge for us to overcome. We are so grateful that Scale Up and Quest supports the vision we have for the future and their acknowledgement means so much to us and the MyBump Media team.
How will you be utilising the investment coming from the partnership?
During MCO, we took the time to go back to our idea board and with guidance from the ScaleUp team, expanded our services from a car wrap advertising platform to a full fledged crowd advertising platform. The investment amount will be utilised to support our team's growth, technology development, marketing efforts and gear our company for regional expansion.
What challenges does a startup like yours face in growing regionally?
As a startup with an ambition to disrupt advertising, we face the challenge of numerous trial and errors and the uphill battle of shifting the mindset of how advertising has been done in the past. As first time founders, we had to go through the steep learning curve of managing financials, building a productive team, figuring out market strategies and gaining industry acceptance. We also face the challenge for market share with other bigger, well funded competitors in the advertising industry.
Which country do you think holds the biggest potential to market your product?
We are looking to tackle the Malaysian market and replicate similar business model in Australia and other ASEAN countries starting with Thailand which we have identified the market readiness. While there are other players in these countries, there is no dominant player and we believe with our expertise, technology stack and network; we are able to do well.
The pandemic has proven to be some of the most challenging time for a lot of businesses. How did you overcome the challenges?
With the backlash of MCO and movement restrictions by the government, it affected our main service of car wrap advertising since no one was driving around much. We ended up with months of no revenue since most companies are on survival mode and retaining their advertising budget. To be honest, if not for the drawdown of the CIP300 grant we received from Cradle in 2019, it would have been difficult for us to maintain the company. But we also took the downtime opportunity to work on improving our internal processes and coming up with new revenue streams. We feel very blessed to have made it this far.
What opportunities do you think this investment will give rise to in the long term?
The investment amount will give us the much needed runway to operate through these uncertain times and allow us to focus on improving our current services and tech platform. Even more than the investment, having Scale Up Malaysia and Quest Ventures team as our partners, mentors and sounding board are invaluable gains for us.
How important do you think these initiatives are for startups in the country?
As a startup that has gained benefits from participating in government and private accelerator and training programs, we do notice the market gap for startups that has breached the market fit stage and looking to scale. The Scale Up Malaysia program as well as the timing of the program during MCO allowed us to learn the missing pieces needed to scale our business and optimize our revenue streams. Being selected also provided us with the mental assurance that we're on to something and we're excited to take MyBump Media to the next level. We hope the same opportunity is made available and taken up by other fellow startups in Malaysia.
We hope the concept of crowd advertising will be taken up and leveraged on by the advertising and marketing industry. We would like to thank our partners, clients and network for their trust and support in our services.
We’ve had the pleasure of working with amazing brands including Astro and TNG eWallet as well as multinational corporations like Disney, Tesco, Starbucks and Shell.
In other news:
Prudential Assurance Malaysia Berhad (PAMB), Taylor’s Education Group, Yayasan Generasi Gemilang (YGG) and the National Entrepreneurship Institute (INSKEN) have partnered to pilot the PRUKasih Entrepreneurship Programme to equip urban low-income groups with entrepreneurship skills and knowledge.
Malaysian Fintech company, Finology Sdn Bhd (Finology) has been selected as the Seedstars World Regional Finals: Asia winner coming ahead of competition from the region in the Grand Finale.
Sunway Innovation Labs (Sunway iLabs) has launched the 2021 Super Accelerator programme, a four-month programme for startups seeking to deliver innovative solutions focusing on six key verticals – Smart Cities, Agrifoodtech, Edutech, Digital Health, eCommerce, and Fintech.
Program Perolehan Impak Sosial Kerajaan (PPISK), an impact-driven government procurement programme for social enterprises is now open for registration through the portal mymagic.my/ppisk.