This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on August 7, 2017 - August 13, 2017

WITH online shopping sites like Lazada, Zalora and Carousell gaining in popularity and dominant pay-TV operator Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd introducing more home-shopping channels, HyppTV would rather wait and see.

The Internet Protocol television service operates a home-shopping channel called LakuMall, and is in no hurry to increase the number — at least not this year.

“We will continue to launch more [home-shopping channels], probably next year. The thing is, e-commerce penetration in Malaysia is still very low. Malaysians still prefer to shop in bricks-and-mortar stores,” Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) executive vice-president of new media Jeremy Kung Eng Chuang tells The Edge.

Kung feels that e-commerce sales in Malaysia are not growing as fast as in countries like China. “When I was in Chengdu back in December, I saw people buying products from a street hawker and all they did was order something, scan the QR (quick response) codes with their mobile phones to pay and get the products.”

Nevertheless, he concedes that there is enormous potential for growth in the e-commerce space. “That is something that we are exploring — how to do it. There are a lot of players who want to come into the [home-shopping] market but they also see that Malaysia is not there yet in the e-commerce space.

“There is also the wait-and-see attitude. But we are trying to encourage them [retailers] to come in now. We are telling them there is a market. It’s small now but let’s grow it together. The pie is there and everyone is exploring how to grow it so that more people can get on board.”

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