KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 13 — Helping players in the agriculture industry digitise their business, turn their brands into household names and connect buyers to sellers is Trinity42 Sdn Bhd’s key goal.
Boasting an exclusive partnership with multinational technology company Alibaba since 2009, Trinity42 has the exclusive tools to analyse countries’ logistics, competition landscape and market demand so Malaysian businesses can explore markets outside of Malaysia.
The company’s roots, however, are more low-tech. Based on the old method of finding a company’s phone number in the Yellow Pages, its business model is all about connecting people.
Once the Yellow Pages phased out due to the digital era, Trinity42’s CEO Christopher Ng said the company moved into the digital world and is the only company in Malaysia to partner Google and Alibaba to date.
Ng said it found that many companies in Malaysia do not have a strong digital footprint and are losing out on potential sales and market share due to a lack of marketability.
“The past five years the top five categories for demand for Malaysian products are furniture, palm oil related and the top among them is food and beverage category and halal products.
“This is because Malaysian businesses have some advantages like being in a Muslim country people know we have higher integrity compared to others. However, most businesses in Malaysia are not digitised. Their websites are not indexed and cannot be found in other countries.
“So since agro is in demand, we worked with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture Industries (Mafi) to do something to help out,” Ng told Malay Mail when met at the 2022 Malaysian Agriculture, Horticulture and Agrotourism Exhibition (Maha) at MAEPS Serdang yesterday.
Trinity42 has a lot of experience in the industry as it has worked with Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (Mdec) and Malaysian External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade). It is Matrade’s e-trade programme trusted partner and this is its first appearance at Maha under Mafi.
It is product agnostic — meaning anyone with something sellable can approach it for help in marketing their products.
Ng said it is always getting new clients with even social media giant TikTok and job search engine LinkedIn coming to it for advice.
Its exclusive relationship with Alibaba and Google places it at the forefront of digital advancements as it is one of the few companies in South-East Asia with ongoing partnerships with them and it has built a strong bond and trust in the past 10 years, said Ng.
“This is why the company is here at Maha working with the ministry as we can help a lot with turning all these companies into digital, multiple channels online.
“Many agricultural companies with great products reached out to Mafi but they didn’t know how to market them. That’s where we come in,” said Ng.
“We provide them with complimentary digital export readiness reports especially for this event. If you’re a participant or referred to us by Mafi or Mardi (Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute) we will do it for free.
“We analyse their digital assets, look at the competition in the markets, pool data from Google and Alibaba to at least give them some insights before they plan their marketing.” Trinity42 has booths at Maha until Sunday and anyone wanting some advice can visit them to speak with its consultants.
“We must understand that the marketplace is very different country by country. For example in Thailand Facebook is slowly phasing out and Instagram is taking over while in Malaysia there are still a lot of people using Facebook but the younger generation doesn’t.
“This is where we jump in and can offer advice on how to market and promote each individual product in the best possible manner,” he added.
Maha will continue to run through Sunday, August 14 at MAEPS Serdang.
