Move already has 15.4 million active monthly users in the region and a share of about 10% of its estimated US$30 billion (RM140.1 billion) travel market, CEO Nadia Omer said in an interview with Bloomberg News yesterday.
“The real inflection point in e-commerce, which I see happening in the next two to three years, is in travel,” Nadia said yesterday, the same day Capital A reported that Move posted revenue of RM171.4 million for the third quarter, up 68% year-on-year.
Nadia was appointed as Move CEO effective Oct 26 this year. Her previous corporate experience ranged from Procter & Gamble, Nestle and PepsiCo.
She most recently served as the chief business officer of Cars24, Southeast Asia before joining Move.
Setting Move apart
Regarding Superapp’s rebranding to Move, Nadia said the decision was to set the digital entity apart from AirAsia.
She explained that as an online travel agency, Move needs to fulfil the different needs of customers, which cannot be entirely satisfied by the low-cost carrier.
“People are travelling to other countries and they have to take other carriers. We connect them in ways so that they can find those options. I want to make sure they find the right hotels with us,” she said.
Recognising that there are different types of travellers – premium, mainstream, and affordable – Nadia said Move caters to the group positioned “somewhere between mainstream and affordable”.
Move currently sells flights, hotels, travel insurance, fintech products and offers ride-hailing services specialising in airport journeys. It has plans to offer new services in the future.
“We will introduce and scale up travel insurance, like, for the price of a cup of coffee. We are also developing buy now, pay later programmes with our partners,” Nadia revealed.
Moving forward, Move aims to capitalise on expanding its footprint into China and India following the government’s announcement of visa-free entry for travellers from both countries.
“We have China and India – two big diasporas that both love coming into this region. Next year we will start focussing on building the app business there,” she said.
Nadia hopes to one day see Move evolve into a publicly-listed company.
“The first home run we need to score is that when we ask people what Move does, they don’t say it’s just for flights. It is for flights plus hotels,” she said.
As at 12.29pm, Capital A’s share price was down by 1.5 sen (1.72%) at 86 sen, valuing the company at RM3.6 billion.