Misfit Tech Eases the Pandemic’s Impact on Myanmar’s IT landscape
This year, Myanmar grappled with the pandemic, affecting the way people go about their daily lives. We see a rise in use of social media and text platforms for everything ranging from online shopping to booking doctor appointments. This has had a huge impact on the way businesses operate; with the rise in online shopping, the Myanmar population is frequenting Facebook and e-commerce websites to make their purchases. Recent research shows that over 39% of the local population are active on Facebook, making it the most preferred social media platform in Myanmar. As more people work from home, our main mode of communication becomes more text-based, with WhatsApp and Viber becoming a popular text platform.
The E-commerce ecosystem is constantly evolving as well; sales have spiked during lockdown, with consumers stocking up on hand sanitizers, food and other essentials. Since moving back to Myanmar in 2018, I have seen tremendous changes in the local E-Commerce landscape. The pandemic sees a rise in the number of startups emerging too, with small e-commerce companies popping up to cater to the rapidly growing need for fast delivery of groceries and household essentials. With growing demands for Myanmar’s needs for home delivery of goods, there comes a need for Myanmar to step up in establishing an ecosystem for e-commerce, logistics and delivery to come together.
Misfit Tech merges these needs and comes in to meet Myanmar’s growing needs for digital transformation with our advanced tech solutions. Being aware of what the Myanmar population wants, we provide our services in accordance with local preferences. For instance, our conversational AI Alice chatbot is deployed on Myanmar’s most preferred channels of online shopping – Facebook and Viber. The chatbot can be integrated in websites and apps, as well as WhatsApp and other text platforms, covering all the bases of what the client may need in their choice of preferred channel. Our chatbots can be tailored to fit the client’s exact requirements, whether it be e-commerce, banking transactions, informational and many more.
As for the future of Myanmar, I foresee the tech landscape continuing to evolve, even after the pandemic. More people will continue to shop online for the ease of convenience it offers, meaning aspects of the e-commerce and Facebook vendors need to be improved. There is a need for logistics and delivery services to be more streamlined. Currently, there are issues of customers receiving their parcels from one order on different days. E-commerces are sending out items as they receive them from the vendors and this is conflicting for customers who have busy schedules and have to accept delivery of the same order on different days. With better logistical planning and coordination of deliveries, this issue should be avoided to make customer lives easier.
With gradual and consistent adjustments and enhancements in the tech industry, Myanmar will move forward as a nation. The country has already made monumental strides in the last five years and more growth is yet to come.
