Maybe Tony Fernandes should just focus on aviation

Dan Lain-Lain (Malay for “and others”) is a weekly column by Tech in Asia journalist Emmanuel Samarathisa that dissects the goings-on in the Malaysia tech scene but with a heavy mix of current affairs, policy, and politics. Click here to read past articles.

Tony Fernandes loves rebranding exercises.

He did that last year when he renamed AirAsia, his holding company, to Capital A. And he did it again on Monday by changing AirAsia Super App to AirAsia Move.

AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes / Photo credit: AirAsia

According to Fernandes, the rebranding is part of an “ongoing transformation.” Name change aside, the businessman said that the move will see the merger of the super app with financial services provider BigPay.

The super app offers a range of services from flight and hotel bookings to bills payment through BigPay. The difference then and now is that Fernandes wants to integrate the super app and BigPay under one roof.

This has been par for the course for the aviation tycoon. Whenever he rebrands, he’ll also restructure.

But will this latest corporate exercise take off? Fernandes, known for his entrepreneurial and public relations smarts, is touting a big game. But there are some things we need to consider.

Not so super after all?

First, his foray into the super-app business comes at a time when regional rivals are feeling less, well, super.

The lessons from Grab and GoTo are good examples here. They recently shed thousands of jobs and rolled back marginal business units. Their share prices have also not recovered to IPO levels yet. The good times they enjoyed during the pandemic-induced lockdowns are over.

This may be the same fate of Capital A or even AirAsia Move, if Fernandes seeks to list the latter in the future, simply because the super-app model isn’t as attractive to shareholders as it once was.

In addition, the merger of AirAsia Super App and BigPay isn’t a game changer. For starters, Malaysia has a national QR code, which means that customers can use any compatible e-wallet to transact as long as merchants carry the code.

That may bode well for AirAsia Move. However, this has to be seen in a wider context.

The two most common e-wallets in Malaysia by number of users are Grab and Touch ’n Go (TNG). Both have their unique selling points.

Still financially distressed

Back to the drawing board