As Malaysians gather resources to help those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, venture capitalist Andrew Tan has launched a campaign to raise funds to assist medical frontliners while helping businesses gain more exposure online.
The Million Dollar Traffic campaign is targeted at onboarding 10,000 businesses and helping them promote their companies and services globally – all for RM9.90. This fee will be donated to aid healthcare workers and purchase medical resources.
Tan, founder of TBV Capital Sdn Bhd, says this is an opportunity to put his business acumen in service of a good cause. To date, the company has invested RM14.3 million in businesses in the fast-moving consumer goods space.
“There are a lot of small and medium enterprises that have put off going online because they lack the resources and know-how. But the current situation has forced everyone to go online, if they want their businesses to survive,” says Tan.
“I started this initiative because it is not just the virus we have to worry about. It is also the concern about what we should do after the pandemic passes. The aftermath could leave businesses in the lurch,” he tells Enterprise.
Since kick-starting the initiative on March 19, 1,514 companies have joined the cause. These businesses will have their brands and services listed on the campaign’s official website – milliondollartraffic.net.
Once it gets a sizeable number of participants, Tan and his team will work on promoting the businesses to a global audience. The website will be active until March 2021.
“We will start promoting the products and services across different business associations, groups and pages in Southeast Asia. We hope this will become the window for businesses across the region to collaborate with each other and establish their own networks. This is a limited time opportunity to transform RM9.90 into RM100,000 in sales,” says Tan.
The financial, energy and commodity markets have been spiralling as uncertainty around the pandemic intensifies. But this is no reason businesses cannot “make money” in this climate, he asserts. “You just have to know where to look. It seems like it is all doom and gloom, like there is no hope of recovering from this. But that is the wrong way to look at it.”
Tan points out that some Malaysians lack crisis awareness and are too dependent on government initiatives. “There is always money to be made. It is just a matter of finding those opportunities. The Chinese for word for crisis is “危机” or weiji, signifying both danger and opportunity.”
As this is a one-of-a-kind endeavour, Tan hopes it will make the Malaysia Book of Records. “It is harder to get a consistent stream of traffic or new customers now and businesses need to get better at attracting customers no matter what business they are in. When the pandemic ends, our goal is to make sure that your business is skyrocketing instead of going downhill,” he says.
For more information on how to register, please visit https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf2_LwSK-F5cKOx3ZFxuZaT47iTjqS2rIHpMu-bDMy4wnRhpw/viewform.