KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 (Bernama) -- It is undeniable that Malaysia’s agribusiness industry has faced huge challenges following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected the business operations across the supply chain including the production, distribution, and retailing of agricultural products and the food industry. In response to this, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries is partnering with Dropee to ensure that the distribution of food (such as rice, meat, fish, vegetables, and fruits) across Malaysia is in control and adequate throughout the COVID-19 period.
 
Dropee’s B2B eCommerce marketplace allows producers across the country to continue selling their produce to wholesalers, retailers, and consumers during the COVID-19 period. Dropee’s initiative with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries provides an alternative sales channel for these producers and suppliers to sell their products online in bulk. Through Dropee’s platform, sellers are also able to access logistics, financing, and insurance support from Dropee key partners.
 
“We are very excited to partner with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries to transform Malaysia’s food supply production and distribution businesses online. Since 2017, we’ve been helping many businesses across Malaysia to digitally sell their products in bulk. My team and I are confident to take on this mission in successfully helping our nation’s farmers, fishermen, and suppliers to go-digital,” said Lennise Ng, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dropee.
 
Other than just a platform to list their produce, Dropee’s team provides hands-on guidance to suppliers from setting up their online B2B store to marketing their products. “We worked with many traditional businesses and helped them go from offline to online. From our years of experience, we understand that many of these producers and suppliers need our help and guidance on the technical know-how to bring their businesses online. That’s why we’ve crafted out a very detailed and easy-to-follow guide for them,” said Aizat Rahim, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Dropee.

Getting Started

The official website launch of this initiative is targeted to be on the 8th of June 2020. With that said, Dropee has already soft-launched the project and engaged with hundreds of farmers and fishermen across Malaysia to prepare them for the official day. During this preparation, producers and suppliers will go through an induction process to get educated on the changes that will happen to their business operations and marketing when they go online.

For this initiative, a special section in Dropee’s marketplace, called LokalKita, will be set up to highlight the products from our nation’s farmers and fishermen. With ‘LokalKita’, Dropee aims to showcase all of Malaysia’s local produce that buyers can directly purchase from.

In the Long Run
 
Dropee hopes to help all 90,000 farmers and fishermen in Malaysia to leverage Dropee’s B2B marketplace to sell their products, manage the buying demand from their customers, and understand purchasing trends to produce more relevant products for the consumer market.
 
The main objective of this go-digital initiative is to help producers and suppliers maintain a stable distribution of food supplies and access to safe, quality, and affordable produce for all communities in Malaysia.
 
As part of the global & highly well-known Y-Combinator and Alibaba’s eFounders Fellowship Programme, Dropee aims to help businesses across Southeast Asia to digitally transform and adapt towards the new economy - in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

About Dropee

Dropee is a B2B eCommerce marketplace that helps traditional manufacturing, wholesale, and distribution businesses to adopt technology and go-digital. At Dropee, we believe that the experience of B2B buying and selling can be better. Today, suppliers can build even stronger relationships with their customers. We’ve made it our mission to help brands, wholesalers, and distributors achieve greater success by making it easy for their customers to order the right products from them, in-person and online.

Dropee’s modern and digital approach to the wholesale industry allows retailers to discover, purchase, and manage inventories for their store all on a single marketplace platform - and its software tool for suppliers helps businesses to deal with all the pain points of a growing customer database, from ordering to payments. This saves retailers and suppliers time and money, allowing them to focus on what's most important: building and running their business.

For more information, please visit http://www.dropee.com

Dropee works closely with & supported by Cradle Fund, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) under Global Growth Acceleration (GAIN) programme, TERAJU (Unit Peneraju Agenda Bumiputera), Yayasan Inovasi Malaysia (YIM) & SME Corp.

SOURCE: Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd 

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Dropee
Name: Felicia Khoo
Project Marketing Manager
Tel: (+60) 12-252 1893
Email: felicia@dropee.com

Name: Aizat Rahim
Managing Director
Tel: (+60)10-770 7007
Email: aizat@dropee.com

Name: Lennise Ng
Chief Executive Officer
Tel: (+60)12-518 3009
Email: lennise@dropee.com

Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries (MOA)
Name: Abdul Taib
Pegawai Perhubungan Awam, Unit Komunikasi Korporat
Tel: (+603) 8870 1383
Email: abdultaib@moa.gov.my
 
--BERNAMA