GBA Lifestyle News
An elevator convo with Kenneth Liu. See here for more from our Next Up series.
What do you do?
I’m the regional head of Asia’s leading online grocery concierge service, Honestbee.
How does your business work?
We provide different services by connecting our merchants, drivers, our shopper bees, and users. You can have any grocery items delivered to your door within two hours — anytime, anywhere.
In Japan, we also deliver mails and packages. In Singapore, we even take care of dirty laundry. In Hong Kong, we added food delivery to our platform last July because food plays such a crucial part in every Hongkongers’ heart.
How did your business get started?
Honestbee started in Singapore 2015 with one mission — to create a positive impact to society by providing professional training and hiring people from lower income groups as shopper bees. This includes retired aunties and uncles and people who need an alternative income, but at the same time people who are also in need of a flexible working schedule.
Who are your clients?
Anyone in Hong Kong. We are here to help our customers live a hassle-free life so they can spend more time with their families over the weekend, or even have the extra time to start doing the 30-minute HIIT workout that they put down as a New Year’s resolution three years ago.
What’s a day in your working life like?
Meetings, meetings, meetings. My typical day will kick off with a nice cup of coffee. After finishing my coffee, it will be followed by a few internal meetings with my lovely colleagues in Hong Kong. After lunch, I will be on the road with merchant owners, corporate partners, store owners, or the marketing teams from other brands. As a start up, we are always looking for collaborations and partnerships both locally and regionally. I wrap up the afternoon with two or more meetings with senior management teams from Hong Kong and a quick update with our headquarters in Singapore.
Where do you see Honestbee in future?
A lot of exciting things are happening in the retail and online grocery environment right now. With players entering the market with different angles, that will definitely change the whole retail landscape. We will expect to see hypermarkets to shrink in terms of size and more specialty stores to open in smaller neighborhoods, one of the main reasons being that retail rent is skyrocketing. Hence, in the future, we are expecting that many merchants will use our platform as a significant alternative income source.
On our side, we will continue to strive for operational excellence for our customers — better coverage and quicker delivery. At the merchant level, we’d like to focus on bringing on board more unique and interesting merchants to our platform, as consumers are always looking for something special to try out.
