Poor infrastructure in Myanmar is not stopping this startup from helping local restaurants

Myanmar might be one of the hottest emerging markets in the world right now, but its startup ecosystem continues to struggle to overcome growing pains on a daily basis. A great number of these problems stem from the dire state of the country’s infrastructure. For example, power shortages are common, especially during the summer, and backup power generators are a must-have for many businesses.

If there is one area that looks promising in Myanmar, it is the telecommunications sector. Not only have foreign telcos Telenor and Ooredoo collectively signed up millions of Burmese for their data services in the past year, the government has most recently taken a US$105 million loan from Japan to upgrade the local telecommunication infrastructure. Suffice to say, it is expected that a lot more Burmese will be carrying smartphones and tablets by the end of 2015.

These two factors are what led Min Zeya Phyo, founder of development firm Code2Lab, to develop a tablet-based point-of-sales (POS) system called SmartSales. “Here, electricity is a privilege because everyday, the power goes out for hours. So a tablet-based solution is a perfect match,” Min explains.

“It has battery power to last for hours. And then internet connectivity isn’t great either, so we need a solution that works locally. That’s how we set out to build our lean version of SmartSales.”

Changing lanes

This product was not what Min had initially returned to Myanmar to pursue. Having left his previous company in Singapore due to department restructuring, his plan was simply to set up an offshore development service shop. With a few clients in hand – won through his Singaporean network – Code2Lab was born in an apartment belonging to the parents of his two co-founders.

Within a week of returning to Yangon in early 2012, however, his priorities started to shift. “While dining with my newfound friends, I noticed that the restaurants had so many waiters – a ratio of two waiters to one table – yet the service wasn’t great,” Min recalls. “On some occasions they missed out my order entirely, and this repeated in different places.”

A chat with the owner of a local chain of high-end tea shops, Shwepalin, revealed a series of problems relating to the existing POS system, as well as staff and management issues. At his urging, Min decided to work on a solution to these complications. Shwepalin ended up becoming one of SmartSales’ first major clients:

We were so happy that our client [Shwepalin] took the risk of embracing new technology, and using SmartSales at his most popular main branch. For the next three to six months, we focused on tweaking the UI and UX for the lesser-educated waiters, some of whom have never seen a smartphone or tablet before. Soon after, in June 2012, the solution was deployed to rest of the branches.

His joy was compounded as the deployment turned out to be a great success. “After using our system, the frontline staff never got their salary deducted for wrong orders, or missing any,” Min says.

Baptism of fire

Problems began to arise as Min started turning his attention towards developing SmartSales into a full-fledged business. To begin with, he wasn’t familiar with how startups worked – things such as “funding” and “culture” were a vague notion to him.