What have I done in February & March 2016?
Its already the end of March 2016. Tomorrow is April Fools Day which I don’t care at all. I missed my February 2016 monthly report. So, in this post I am going to combine February & March 2016 report into one report.
FEBRUARY
Seriously I don’t remember clearly what I did in February. Sorry guys, I will not repeat this mistake again in the future.
MARCH
In January, I decided to pursue my 3 startup ideas which are: FreeCopy, Prspctiv & ParaGear. I realised that I am putting too much on my plate. I need to FOCUS! So I decided to keep FreeCopy & ParaGear on hold. I am going to focus on Prspctiv. One thing at a time.
I applied the MaGIC Accelerator Program & SUPERB by Teraju but both fail. I am not going to give up and going to try again in their next opening. I realised my weakness is my market research and business plan is not strong enough. I need to do more research and execution of ideas.
During March, I taught myself about Google AdWords and Digital Marketing Research by watching Lynda.com. I am amazed by the way the internet have revolutionize education. Digital Marketing is a brand new thing here in Malaysia and I realised that big corporates and SME are starting to dive into this. So, there is a big opportunity for Digital Marketing business in the future in Malaysia. I need to brush up my digital marketing skills.
While surfing the internet, I stumbled upon Tune Labs. It is a VC/Incubator/Accelerator based in Malaysia and was just launched last year. What attract me to Tune Labs is the mentor for their incubator & accelerator program are Tony Fernandes & Kamarudin Meranun, the founders of Air Asia. They are opening their application for the new batch and I am excited to join them. My startup idea that I am going to submit is “HALAL HERO”.
HALAL HERO
“At Halal Hero, we want to help Muslim travel anywhere, anytime with peace of mind by making it easier to find halal restaurants, cafes and street food. We are a halal food discovery app.”
That basically sums up what Halal Hero is about. As a Muslim, it is very difficult for me when I travel especially to Non-Muslim majority countries because it is difficult to find halal food. I have experience this several time when I backpack around South East Asia. When I did my research, I realized that there is a big market for Halal discovery app because:
The Muslim travel market was worth US$126 billion which is 12.3% of the total global outbound tourism market in 2015, with 117 million Muslim travelers representing 10 percent of the global travel economy, according to a recent report by CrescentRating and MasterCard.
Asia is the No 1 destination for Muslim traveler, with 66.7 million Muslim traveler visit Asia in 2015. That is 56.7% of the total global Muslim traveler. Asia Halal Food Market size is estimated at US$418 billion in 2010.
This is an untapped market. With this service, I hope I can help solve this problem.
WHAT ARE MY PLANS FOR APRIL?
My plan now is I am going to FOCUS on these three things only: Halal Hero, Prspctiv and Digital Marketing.
Halal Hero
- Submit my application to Tune Labs.
- Launch MVP: website, IG & FB.
- Iterate, iterate, iterate!
Prspctiv
- Launch Prspctiv Journal, a bi-weekly Malay-language newsletter featuring the best, handpicked content from around the web covering business, startup and entrepreneurship.
- Ramp up IG to get more followers.
Digital Marketing
- Learn Google Analytics, Facebook Advertising & email marketing
- PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE my Adwordsm Analytics, FB Ads and Email marketing skills.
So, that is it for March. I look forward to April. Keep on hustling and remember everything great need time. And I need to FOCUS! As Steve job perfectly say:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”, Steve Jobs.
