MY STORY

Hi, I'm Zhen Yang, CEO and founder of Engage. I was fortunate to have been an entrepreneur for the past 10 years, and it has trained me to think analytically and systematically solve any problems which arise. And this is the primary reason why our team founded Engage. To solve a problem faced by small retailers throughout the world. The problem of losing customers to bigger competitions. The pain is real as I too own and operate a retail business.

It's noteasy being a retail business owner especially during this Covid-19 pandemic. As a retail business owner myself, we face 4 key problems. First, customers nowadays are lacking loyalty as they are easily distracted by competitions. Competitors are always spending more on marketing than us! Even if successful in bringing in customers, owners do not have the right tools to engage their customers effectively - getting them to return more often. And finally, those customized solutions used by the bigger and richer competitions are unreachable for most of us, costing up to RM200,000 to own and maintain.

Truth about Loyalty Programs

People cringe when they come across loyalty programs. The problem lies in how businesses are exploiting the use of loyalty programs to convince consumers to spend more but stingy in benefits with negligible rewards in exchange for their loyalty. This has given everyone a bad taste of loyalty programs. Current solutions only benefit businesses, neglecting the end users, providing a single feature solution with hopes to suit all businesses of all sizes. Offering a One-Size-Fit-All solution does not work anymore! 

But before going any further, let me explain why Engage is so relevant now.

This trend of digital customer loyalty and engagement started six years back in 2014 with international brands like Starbucks introducing their digital programs into Malaysia. 2015 was a standard Malaysia style, where everyone waited to see if they succeed or fail. So when no one failed, the copying began. For the next 3 years all the other medium to big brands started to launch their own versions. Brands such as Paparich, TeaLive, Sushi King, Nandos and even the electrical store Seng Heng had one. So what does this mean for retail businesses in 2020 and now plagued by the Covid-19 pandemic? What's for sure is that customer engagement and loyalty is not just a good to have solution anymore but a must have strategy for all retail businesses to survive. Loyal customers are the catalyst to the survival and success of any business.

MY PROJECT

Now what if we said that we have made it possible for all retail businesses to own a unique solution perfectly tailored for their business, previously only enjoyed by their bigger and richer competitions to monopolize the market. A powerful solution which keeps customers coming back, spending more while building a strong loyal following to their brand. Yes, you heard that right! Even food trucks can now easily recognize and re-engage their existing customers to visit and spend more. And with the use of A.I. technology, they now own the ability to identify who’s loyal and who’s not, allowing extremely targeted communications between the two parties. Now wouldn’t that be useful.

Engage is not just a loyalty program but an engagement vehicle designed to delight visitors with tailored offerings and services depending on each specific need. Giving business owners full control and access on how they plan to engage each visitor. As for the visitors, there is no one loyalty program – they will experience a tailored engagement launched by businesses giving them his or her own version of the program tailored to their specific needs.

Let me explain how our secret sauce works. 

STEP 1

Merchants using Engage can make use of all 10 of our customer engagement features. Mix and Match up to a total of 388 COMBINATIONS of unique campaigns to suit any business strategy.

STEP 2

We then slice and dice all customers data collected from campaigns to create an independent Data Model for each Customer. Engage will help  collect 3 key metrics. Recency to know when was their last visits, Frequency to know how often they visited and Monetary on how much they have spent.

STEP 3

This is where our A.I. Tech kicks-in. The systems automatically segmentize your customers allowing you to re-engage your existing customers with personalized campaigns. Why is this so important? Because we believe that engaging your ‘loyal’ customers must be different from your ‘dormant’ customers.

Importance of Being Unique 

Attracting and maintaining customers is getting tougher each day, and standing out is close to impossible. But businesses using Engage will experience complete ownership and control over every engagement campaign. We believe in being unique. Unique businesses and Unique customers require Unique engagements. And this is where Engage stands apart, businesses get the most data-driven customer engagement solution providing customers with an immersive experience that is totally independent of each other. Engage can be used anytime and anywhere around the world. If you believe that your existing customers are important to you, then Engage will be your perfect choice. We want to be the tool which levels the playing field for small retailers to sustain and fight through this pandemic. 

Although new in the market, our solution has been tested and validated in  4 regional countries benefiting over 3,000 consumers, resulting in 2,300 redemption worth over RM1,000,000.

WHY CROWDFUNDING?

The reason why we chose MyStartr and why specifically crowdfunding for our fundraising strategy is because retail businesses require support from the crowd, from people like you and me. Imagine your neighbourhood mom and pop grocery store, your morning coffee shop, your favorite saloon or even your weekly car wash centers. There are hundreds of thousands of them throughout Southeast Asia and are estimated to be worth 1.6 Billion ringgit and 468 Million ringgit in Malaysia alone. This market is huge and we need all the help we can get to reach out to these businesses.

In 2019, we were the top Startup in Selangor, the best A.I. and Machine Learning Startup in Malaysia for the same year and our latest achievement was being selected as the pioneering startup for the Cyberjaya Smart City Initiative 2020. We are also honoured to be featured by several renowned media channels such as Astro Awani and Vulcan Post.

In the next 5 years, Engage is aimed to assist 30,000 retail businesses spread throughout 7 Southeast Asia countries. Being an early stage startup and with a proven and validated product, we will be expecting a 10X in growth within the next 5 years. With this we’re calling out to all our friends and communities to join us in our company to achieve this 10X growth. Well what's after this 10X, we will then venture outside of Southeast Asia together for an even higher return. What about a 20X growth? Join us and let's make this a reality for all of us.

Team

Term Sheet

Founder Pitch Deck