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Beyond the uber of X: Reimagining on-demand

When most people think of on-demand in the Philippines, they think of goods. On-demand companies ferry everything from products, parcels, groceries, and food from point A to point B to simplify consumer life.

Through these services, we are spared the hassle of commuting through the nation’s infamous traffic to shop at our nearest mall, deliver paperwork on our own, or wait in line at the hottest new eatery. 

While these services are absolutely necessary, there are already more than enough providers catering to them. If you need any evidence that the market is saturated, just go to any stoplight in the country.

There will be an enormous diversity of delivery drivers, some even wearing pieces of uniform from two different organisations (presumably as they changed citizenship to pursue better incentives, or because they switch between the two platforms depending on demand).

In short, we don’t need another uber of X, these problems are already competitively addressed by a multitude of local and multinational organisations.

All across the world and indeed Southeast Asia, consumers are already experiencing the benefits of the next stage of on-demand: information. Instead of pressing a button and someone comes to your physical location, you press a button and someone assists via an interface. The knowledge these resources brings is arguably as important to consumers, if not more so than anything you could physically deliver to them. 

Take, for example, the case of telehealth in Singapore. Organisations like Homage bring 24/7 opportunities for telehealth appointments with doctors. These consultations can save the person a potentially risky trip to the hospital (at a time when the threat of COVID-19 still persists) and give them critical health information.

The same applies to pretty much every sphere of knowledge work, including everything from online education and professional development to legal assistance and professional consulting of every stripe.

If knowledge is power, knowledge now is even more powerful. We can act on the information sooner, producing a greater return in the form of time, money, or other resources.

On-demand for everything

As entrepreneurs, we owe it to consumers in the Philippines to give them this instant access. 

But this space is still emerging in the Philippines. The most mature on-demand space in the country is arguably telehealth (in large part due to the fact we’re in a public health crisis), and that is still only relative to the other analogous industries.

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Evaluated in its entirety, this space is still effectively a blue ocean for businesses and entrepreneurs. We have significantly more demand than we do supply. 

Our organisation, First Shoshin, has entered this space as well, via JojoCare. We provide on-demand access to lawyers, doctors, educators, and other knowledge workers, professionals, and specialists, via any internet-enabled device.

It would be necessarily impossible for us to address every aspect of on-demand knowledge, and so I would like to see more players enter this space. 

This call may seem counterintuitive, but collectively we can address some of the assumptions our industry still faces. For example, some Filipinos are still wary of interfacing with professionals on this level, believing that in-person interactions bring a higher quality of service.

Together we can establish a standard of excellence that contributes to overall market education about these digital services. The overall message? Digital is as good as in-person.

Filipinos are also tactile shoppers, even when it comes to services (for instance, we like reviewing brochures when making purchasing decisions or flipping through reports when evaluating results).

Together we can create best practises for how we can most closely approximate these tactical experiences across digitally-enabled devices. And there are some Filipinos who may be open to these solutions but don’t have the digital literacy skills needed to avail of them.

As an industry, we can band together to help educate more Filipinos, in the same way, that early on-demand delivery services collectively built up a pool of digitally-savvy drivers through patient, hands-on education. 

All in all, there’s more we can do as an industry than we can do on our own as any single organisation. And in the end, it’ll be the consumer, the person we should hold up as our guiding light, who will benefit.

This person will be able to more efficiently access the knowledge he needs to improve health outcomes for him and his family, make better decisions about his career or business, gain more knowledge, and all in all, live a better life.

The headlines of the on-demand economy may be dominated by famous tech companies and hot startups, but it’s this unnamed customer who will always win when a broader world becomes accessible at the push of a button.

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