The Right Way To Boost (Part 1)

Rom Being Just A Digital Financial Service To Be A Full-fledged E-wallet App On Its Own, Boost Has Come A Long Way Since Its Inception In January 2017. Although It Is Still Relatively New Into The Market, Boost Ceo Christopher Tiffin Believes That It Will Succeed, And He Has Every Right To Do So.
 

- Teh Wi-Liam

PC.com: Could you share a bit more about the Boost app, how it came about and of course, what made Axiata move into this space?

Christopher Tiffin: Actually, Axiata has been in mobile money for a long time. Celcom has had a mobile money license for the past few years now, which we got from Bank Negara. If you look across the footprint, we have got mobile money services in every market. But, the reality is, the game’s changing.

In every market, it’s a different brand, different product and different technology. There’s no synergy and it’s all developed in markets under the telco operations. However, in the past five years, the telcos are changing. There’s a lot of competition and a lot of digital services coming in.

The digital evolution curve is really accelerating so as a group, we decided to have the core of Axiata separate from Boost. We did a little assessment on how best to do that and the decision was that we should have the setting outside of the traditional operation as a separate structure. With that, we take it from just being mobile money to digital financial services. In a separate vertical, this allows us the opportunity a) to be a different brand; b) it allows us to be agnostic, where we’re given the freedom of choice of working with many industries.

Interestingly enough, Boost was actually incubated in Celcom, but to digitise the telecommunications services. Of course, the end goal is to become more than that. We wanted to become more than just telecommunications and move more into digital financial services. So, it supports the core, but it also provides other services.