#TECH: Meet the Pomen
A car breaking down in the middle of the night sparked an idea for an online vehicle servicing app which has since grown by leaps and bounds
HAVING your car break down in the middle of traffic is a nightmare for anyone. To have it occur at midnight, as it did for Syed Zulhilmi Tuan Sharif, must have been very traumatic.
The experience, however, sparked an idea in him. Together with his best friend Nazmi Najib, who had a similar experience some years back, they set up Pomen Autodata Sdn Bhd, specifically an automotive maintenance platform connecting car drivers with nearby workshops.
“Frankly, both of us do not know anything about fixing cars. We don’t even know how to change the battery! But the idea stayed with me from that incident and we had long discussions over teh tarik sessions on how to make the app a reality,” said Syed Zulhilmi.
Friends since their younger days in Kuala Terengganu, they reconnected 17 years later after graduating from UTM.
Syed Zulhilmi worked as an IT consultant with companies such as IBM, Huawei and Veritas, while Nazmi had his own multimedia business, Maya Media Software, which produced software for government agencies and banks. He also used to produce e-learning and gaming software.
The duo felt that their expertise and years of experience in IT, software and apps were the “best ingredients” to realise their dream of setting up such a platform.
Both Syed Zulhilmi and Nazmi wanted something easy to use, an app “similar to Grab or foodpanda but focuses on car breakdowns and servicing”.
“And that’s how the Pomen app was born,” declared Nazmi.
WHY POMEN
According to Syed Zulhilmi, the name “Pomen” is a Malaysian way of saying “foreman”.
“The word is easy to remember and one will immediately associate it with car repair,” he said.
Services offered by the Pomen app include battery replacement, jump-start, tyre replacement, vehicle service as well as repair resulting from accidents.
In addition, the app has some cool features such as real-time tracking and transparent pricing to prevent fraud by unauthorised workshops.
App membership is free. There are two parts to the app. The front-end part is for customers (car owners) to access the service. The back-end part is a dashboard for workshops to track reports from transactions.
“Pomen sits in the middle, connecting drivers to workshops. When a driver accesses the app to request for a service or a mechanic, we will direct the request to the nearest workshop,” said Syed Zulhilmi.
“The app will determine the suitable workshop based on criteria such as car profile, workshop profile, location and availability. The platform is intelligent enough to aggregate jobs,” he added.
In September 2018, the beta version of Pomen was released. It had about 100 workshops then with the help of the Malaysia Automotive Association. In January 2019, the app went live.
“Today, we have about 700 workshops on board,” said Nazmi.
Eighty per cent of the workshops are in the Klang Valley, with the rest scattered across the country.
“We will work on having more workshops from outside the Klang Valley soon,” he said.
Pomen is in the Top 11 in the Cohort 2 ScaleUp Malaysia programme and therefore has received RM250,000 in investment.
Prior to this, the start-up also excelled at the SITEC Selangor Accelerator Programme Cohort 2.0, emerging as the winner. It is also a recipient of CIP Ignite (II) funds from Cradle amounting to RM500,000.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
The first six months after going live was challenging for the duo as they had to constantly introduce their platform to workshops.
In September 2019, they got another break when they were selected to be in the Petronas FutureTech Accelerator Programme.
It’s an initiative under the Petronas Corporate Venture Capital arm to discover and nurture local technology entrepreneurs and contribute to the tech-driven startup ecosystem of Malaysia.
“We won the competition and were sent for a two-week global immersion programme hosted by 500 Startups in San Francisco in early 2020,” said Syed Zulhilmi.
It was also the start of Pomen’s business partnership with Petronas.
“In San Francisco, besides startups, we connected with companies like Google and Intel as well as universities like Stanford and Berkeley. We learned a lot by looking into the different business ecosystems,” he said.
“During our time there, we also learnt how to improve our business model and our platform,” he added.
With the invaluable knowledge gained, they ventured into the business-to-business (B2B) segment.
“We started with B2C (business to consumer) but we now service fleet customers via B2B,” said Nazmi.
The move is crucial for Pomen. During the Movement Control Order last year, the B2C segment dropped drastically as there were fewer cars on the road, translating to fewer breakdowns.
“We took that lockdown period to restructure our business model and redevelop some of the features on our platform,” said Nazmi.
“Via our B2B drive, we signed up with Mitsubishi Motors Malaysia, Pizza Hut Deliveries and Petronas to manage the maintenance of their vehicles,” he said.
Through the Pomen system, these companies can easily keep track of their fleet service maintenance.
“This is one of the things that we learnt in the Silicon Valley — whereby the platform can provide insights into the industry via data on vehicle maintenance. We have evolved as we are not just a platform anymore to request for mechanics. The data collected has a bigger value,” explained Nazmi.
MCO IMPACT
While the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting Movement Control Order (MCO) have brought a new set of challenges to businesses, Pomen sees the situation as “a stepping stone” to develop its business further.
“In the months following the first MCO in March last year, downloads of the Pomen app increased by 50 per cent. Many car owners are requesting services such as changing batteries and engine oil.
“With the app, they can easily make reservations with workshops at their own convenience. Besides safety, convenience is key,” said Syed Zulhilmi.
Recently, Pomen collaborated with Petronas Lubricants Marketing Malaysia, listing nine Klang Valley branches of Petronas AutoExpert workshops in the app’s directory of authorised workshops.
EMPOWERING THE JOBLESS
The duo’s latest initiative is the introduction of what is termed Pomen Riders.
“The MCO has impacted many workshops and mechanics. Many workers are jobless with the closure of these businesses.
“We created Pomen Riders to give opportunities to mechanics and also to new automotive graduates.
“For this, we are collaborating with the Ministry of Rural Development to get automotive graduates. We also recruited unemployed mechanics to join our Pomen Riders team.
“The ministry is also providing several motorcycles for the riders and we will come out with a standard uniform soon,” said Syed Zulhilmi.
“To help the freelance mechanics get lubricants for servicing jobs, we have an arrangement with Petronas whereby these mechanics can go to any Petronas shop to get the required lubricants by using a special card. As for the servicing jobs, they will be paid once the job is completed. It’s similar to how foodpanda and Grab riders work,” he said.
Currently Pomen has 48 riders but plans to add 250 more soon.
The Pomen app is available for free on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Source: NST