Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - 10 September 2020 -- The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken up consumer behaviours, stifles industries and has shifted consumer prioritisation in many sectors including the wellness sector. As most of us are readjusting to our new normal and to the altered way of life, companies are seen to be pivoting or reinventing their business model to stay afloat. Sentuh.my (Sentuh), a leading digital wellness platform that links qualified wellness, beauty and physiotherapy centres and mobile therapists to customers today announced that it is set to raise further funds via equity crowdfunding platform pitchIN. The company, which was founded in 2018 has targeted to raise RM500,000 (USD120,000). The ECF campaign is currently Live on pitchIN.
Launched 23 months ago, Sentuh now boasts of more than 200 therapists (75% female therapists & 25% male therapists) of which a majority if not all are in the B40 group from 3 different markets - Klang Valley, Johor Bharu and Kota Kinabalu. It was during the downtime of the 2020 Movement Control Order (MCO) that Sentuh decided upon a new journey of setting another path for their business by establishing their Sentuh Merchant App. Affected by the pandemic situation, their idle time was what triggered the materialisation of this new aspiration.
Sentuh’s CEO & Founder Ahmad Aizudin shared that “Due to the pandemic, we saw that there was a growing demand and trend for home based services and delivery right to your door steps. Physical stores at retail outlets were unable to operate, some experiencing closure with no alternative and not prepared to sustain. Looking at those months of shuttered brick and mortar businesses in the spa and wellness sector inspired us to conceive Sentuh Merchant App.”
Focusing on growth and not wanting their business to continue on to be affected, the Sentuh team identified two major parts of the problem - one is for the consumers, and the other is for the merchants (wellness and beauty service providers). For consumers, booking a massage or a physiotherapy session may be a tedious and time consuming exercise of choosing the right physical wellness centre and having to make their booking on-site. For merchants, digitising their services will be a costly and time consuming exercise, apart from the complex technological requirement that is needed. On top of that, the current pandemic and post-pandemic environment with strict SOP requirements would only mean that consumers’ trust will still be a challenge.
“We are launching our Sentuh Merchant App specifically to provide solutions for physical wellness and beauty service providers, to address those problems. This newly launched mobile application is an end-to-end booking and management system. With this App, we are onboarding reputable merchants in the wellness and beauty space while targeting to grow our market faster by providing access to quality wellness and beauty services to more people. Once in place, our next target is to scale to the rest of the South East Asia market,” added Ahmad.
Inspired by their company’s revenue that hit RM1,000,000 (USD240,000) in Q12020 and the 10,000th booking back in March of 2020 before the calamity started, Sentuh is bullish and optimistic with the launch of their App that has to date onboarded 10 merchants and set to launch in September 2020 with a target revenue of RM6,000,000 (USD1.45million) by end of 2021. Sentuh aims to be the Asean’s premiere Beauty & Wellness App to compliment the demand of modern contemporary lifestyle and to make quality beauty and wellness services accessible to all, leveraging on the growing personalised and on-demand market using technology. Their first Asean outreach is confirmed to be Brunei with a partnership model which will be launched this month.
Previously, Sentuh had received a RM300,000 (USD70,561) grant in 2018 from Cradle Fund’s CIP300 grant and had successfully achieved program deliverables. Sentuh was also part of the ever growing Structured Coaching Program (SCP) conducted by Proficeo for Cradle Fund as part of the CIP300 grant recipient program and Cohort 1 of ScaleUp Malaysia Accelerator program. Officially an approved Angel Tax Incentive certified company, (https://www.cradle.com.my/products/angel-tax-incentive), Sentuh is optimistic about the prospects of this particular journey.
Their ECF information page can be referred to here:
https://equity.pitchin.my/businesses/sentuh-sinergi-sdn-bhd
