Its continual digital transformation involves setting up four pillars of excellence built on the strengths of cloud computing.
A digital travel and lifestyle platform used by 51m users in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand has not stopped its continual digital transformation.
Instead, airasia Super App has announced a five-year strategic collaboration to advance its vision of a co-innovation ecosystem that all businesses and developers can partake in, to serve the daily needs of people in the region.
As part of Capital A’s digital pillar, the airasia mobile super-app offers flight and hotel bookings, e-commerce, food and parcel delivery, ride-hailing, financial and health services, on-demand education and more, anchored by an integrated rewards program and mobile wallet.
In the strategic collaboration with Google Cloud, four pillars will be established:
1. Fostering an agile culture and a co-innovation talent engine
A Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) consisting of AirAsia AllStars and Google Cloud technologists will embed an agile culture across all airasia Super App business units to accelerate product development velocity, enable teams to embrace change, and upskill talent. By tapping site reliability engineering and MLOps best practices, this initiative can strengthen the technical abilities of staff and AirAsia Academy graduates. The CCoE also aims to drive co-innovation efforts in the region and beyond.
2. Ensuring seamless user access
By leveraging Google Cloud infrastructure and advanced microservices, serverless and networking technologies, the CCoE will enhance the super app so that it remains robust, reliable and lightweight as more features and services are added. This ensures that the platform runs seamlessly when accessed by a high volume of users at any given time, including those in rural areas with intermittent internet connectivity or using lower-cost smartphones with less storage capacity.
3. Unlocking data-driven insights
By deploying analytics, machine learning and AI technologies, the CCoE’s data scientists can unify and analyze data sets to glean real-time insights into customer sentiment and emerging trends. These include an understanding of the travel sector’s recovery trajectory and consumption patterns around food delivery, ride-hailing and more. The insights will enable the platform to serve hyper-personalized recommendations to users and help micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to grow their revenue streams.
4. Empowering partners and developers to co-innovate and contribute
By adopting Google Cloud’s open-source principles and infrastructure, the CCoE will develop a suite of software development kits that ecosystem partners and external developers can use to expeditiously and cost-effectively create new features and services for users. These will include reusable software components for biometric identification, chatbots, e-wallets, online travel bookings and more. Google will also tap airasia Super App’s in-region network to expand its developer community in South-east Asia.
According to Tony Fernandes, CEO, Capital A: “We may be late in the game, but with the Super App as the center of our ecosystem of e-commerce, logistics and fintech, we are determined to give all 700 million people in ASEAN inclusivity, accessibility and value.”
Amanda Woo, CEO, airasia Super App, noted: “To benefit everyone across Southeast Asia’s heterogeneous communities, the airasia Super App must be simple and easy-to-use while underpinned by inclusive design, interoperability and personalization,” adding that further co-innovation initiatives are in the works.
Google Cloud’s CEO Thomas Kurian, said: “Super-apps are helping small businesses thrive, and stimulating economies. In fact, the World Economic Forum estimates that 70% of new economic value generated in the next decade will be driven by digital platform business models.”
