KUALA LUMPUR: Celcom Axiata Bhd has teamed up with SK Planet Co Ltd, the wholly-owned Internet services arm of South Korea’s leading mobile operator SK Telecom Co Ltd, to collaborate on e-commerce business opportunities in Malaysia.

In a statement yesterday, Celcom said a joint-venture (JV) company, Celcom Planet, had been formed to look at exploring, seeking and pursuing e-commerce projects here.

The JV will allow Celcom to expand its reach in the digital industry as well as build long-term capabilities in the digital space.

Celcom chief executive officer Datuk Seri Shazalli Ramly said the initiative underlines Celcom’s expanding digital services portfolio, which is designed to create a digital ecosystem and to increase revenue streams that will eventually benefit its customers, service providers and content developers, as well as the traditional brick-and-mortar merchants.

“Celcom is committed to creating and maintaining effective partnerships to support commercialisation and to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,” he said.

“We strongly believe that this latest initiative can spearhead Celcom’s advancement in the digital space as SK Planet has successfully ventured into the e-commerce domain and has a strong background in this field as well as digital content.

“Leveraging on SK Planet’s platform and operations know-how, coupled with Celcom’s experience and knowledge of the local market, we are confident that this collaboration will be very successful,” he added.

Celcom Planet is expected to launch an optimised e-commerce platform by the second half of 2015.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 4, 2014.