Imaginato, a leading technology services provider, today announced a joint initiative with Astro GoShop, the eCommerce platform of Malaysia’s leading multi-platform media and entertainment company, Astro, to further help offline Malaysian businesses market and connect with customers online.

At a time where consumers are increasingly opting for online retail over brick-and-mortar shopping, the online marketplace, Go Shop F&B Bazaar, will allow small and midsize businesses to list their store and products on the platform, free of charge, and more importantly, easily engage with their customers directly through WhatsApp, email or phone.

Sean Liao, CEO, and Founder of Imaginato said: “I see it as a responsibility for those of us in tech that have the ability and capacity to do whatever we can to help in this crisis. Most of these small business owners aren’t very tech-savvy, and they’ve been helpless in trying to cope with the devastation.” 
“We wanted to contribute our marketplace-building and product-launch capabilities to causes that could make the biggest difference. So it’s been great working closely with Astro GoShop these past 2 weeks to quickly launch this free marketplace for SMBs.”

Dr. Grace Lee, CEO of Astro Go Shop said, ”We are cognisant that businesses in Malaysia are severely impacted by this pandemic, especially now with the Movement Control Order (MCO). As a responsible corporation, we are committed to supporting local  businesses and in turn, hopefully, save thousands of jobs specifically in the SME and Micro-SME space.” 

“Ramadan and Raya are traditionally important to SMEs. It is timely that we launched the Go Shop F&B Bazaar at the start of Ramadan. Time was the essence and the need for tight coordination to make this happen. Imaginato has been an instrumental tech development and execution partner of ours these past few years, so it made a lot of sense to come together on this CSR initiative.”

Founded in 2012, Imaginato has worked with companies across Asia Pacific on product strategy, platform development, and scaling, with many becoming leaders in their respective industries. 

Imaginato encourages other companies who are similarly launching tech initiatives in battling the disastrous effects of COVID-19, to send some background information and how it helps others in the pandemic to letushelp@imaginato.com, and the team can try to assist wherever possible, pro bono. For a number of submissions that have the potential to make a significant positive impact, Imaginato will help build the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) app for free.