New digital telco Yoodo offers fully customisable mobile service

• Yoodo to target digital natives that want flexibility with the mobile plan
• Aims to gain 200,000 subscribers by year end

A NEW digital telco has entered the Malaysian market in the form of Yoodo, a service that is operated and owned by Celcom Axiata Bhd.

Yoodo operates on the premise that the customer knows best by offering a customisable mobile service that allows the customer to choose the mobile plan they want.

According to Yoodo head Farid Yunus (pic, above), Yoodo throws out the rules of typical telcos and offers a customisable package across voice, data, messaging and content that operate under Celcom’s 4G/LTE network.

With Yoodo, customers can change, upgrade or downgrade their package at any time via their mobile app. In fact, the plan makes no distinction between prepaid or contract and fashions itself as a hybrid plan between the two.

Customers would be able to choose between 2GB to 100GB of data or 50 minutes to 2,000 minutes of voice or 50 SMS to 2,000 SMS. The unique pay-per-use model means that you can have a plan as cheap as RM20 for 2GB a month or max it out to RM222 a month for 100GB of data, 2,000 minutes of voice and 2,000 SMS.

There are also options to add on data for Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, if you are a more of a social network or video user.

To apply, customers can order a free SIM via the app or web with the option of standard delivery that takes between one to three days.  Express Delivery costs RM15 and the SIM can be delivered within two hours to any location in the Klang Valley.

The Express Delivery option will be fulfilled by Malaysian startup GoGet, an online marketplace that connects people with errands to run with their GoGetter agents. In this case, they will deliver the SIM to customers and Yoodo says it could even arrive within 30 minutes.

Activation of the SIM is done via the app and users will self-authenticate their identity using their IC or passport and even facial recognition, that uses a device’s front camera to identify a user with a selfie.

From there, they will have a free hand to customise their mobile plan. Plans can be changed at any time via the app and no fee will be charged, with the changes taking effect the following month.

Unlike Maxis’ Ookyo and Digi’s tapp, the Yoodo app is universally available for all Android and iOS devices as it does not require a VPN.

Built from the ground up

While Yoodo is far from being the first digital telco to enter the market, Farid is confident that Yoodo has an edge over the competition.

“Traditional mobile operators design plans based on what they want to sell to customers, developing various plans and features that don’t fit most of the individual's needs. We have flipped that on its head by enabling our customers to choose their own customised plan,” said Farid.

The new digital telco claims to offer the most comprehensive solution with the inclusion of number portability and WiFi tether. Customers can even use their domestic data quota while abroad in 12 countries, all this without the need to run a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

“It may have taken us nine months to build Yoodo but that is because we are built completely from the ground up as a digital company with a new billing system and we are riding on Celcom’s network kind of like a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO),” said Farid.

He explained that their approach was different from that of a traditional telco as they were targeting digital natives who are comfortable buying things online. Farid expects Yoodo to gain 200,000 subscribers by the end of the year.

Farid adds that Yoodo will continuously update its mobile app every month to add new features for its customers.

He hopes to have more features added to the app so by the end of 2018, the app would be unrecognisable from when they first launched it. He however, did not want to divulge details as to what those new features may be.

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