Singtel’s staff defied early rejection to launch a product. Can it recapture that magic?

In part two of this series, we looked into how telecommunications titan Singtel achieved limited success with many of its digital efforts. We also laid out a summary of the company’s digital bets in part one.

2020 hasn’t been the easiest year for Singapore’s largest telco. Covid-19 has dampened business and leisure travel, cutting the need for data roaming and prepaid mobile data.

The Gomo mascot / Image credit: Singtel

Companies worldwide have slashed their advertising budgets. Revenue for Singtel’s Group Digital Life division, whose digital advertising business Amobee contributes a lion’s share of the earnings, was down 30% between April and September.

Could 2021 finally bring the change that Singtel needs? After all, the company has had over a decade to refine its digital strategy via trial and error.

Incoming CEO Kuan Moon Yuen will assume the post in January 2021 at a pivotal juncture for Singtel. A promising bid for a digital banking license with super app Grab could see the joint venture drawing 2% to 4% of the consumer deposit market in five years if it’s executed well, one analyst predicts. Results of the selection are expected to be announced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore by the end of the year.

One could argue that innovation within Singtel is very much alive. Even though Hooq eventually folded up, the video-streaming platform went through rapid iterations and led several industry firsts, such as enabling offline downloads of its content.

See: Hooq’s CEO shares his side of the story for the first time

And then there’s Gomo, Singtel’s all-digital mobile plan designed to rival the competitive and generous data bundles of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). The new initiative appears to be a success and is a startup in its own right, based on a former employee’s account to Tech in Asia.

A bright spot

Gomo, which is somewhat of an outlier within Singtel, is an example of what a startup within a corporation could look like.

It had an unusual beginning. “There was this idea which was a cross between a prepaid and postpaid plan, and that was at a nascent stage,” recounts an ex-staff who was familiar with Gomo. The project got a new lease on life when several employees saw the potential to turn it into something more.

Gomo, Singtel’s all-digital mobile plan, targets digital savvy millennials. / Photo credit: Singtel

Six months was all it took for Gomo to go from inception to launch. In the initial stages, several staff across functions, including information technology and design, had come together informally to build a prototype of what the “simple postpaid plan” could look like.

Becoming a digital bank

Could regional telcos offer lessons?

Unlocking value