BY SAARANI VENGADESEN
THE Human Life Advancement Foundation (HLAF) and Dropee jointly initiated Herbee, a new e-commerce platform which provides a digital marketplace for local brands of herbal and natural-based products that are established in Malaysia.
Herbee is a user- friendly platform that empowers local brands to digitally promote, monitor their products and stay connected with their customers anywhere anytime in this new norm.
The launch of Herbee was officiated by Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohammad, Former Prime Minister of Malaysia and Chairman of HLAF at Perdana Leadership Foundation, Putrajaya, on Jan 12 as digitalization plays an imperative role in our way forward to cope with this new norm.
[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”block” ihc_mb_who=”unreg” ihc_mb_template=”3″ ]“The advancement of technologies, with some being disruptive will change the way of we have been doing things. Thus, we have to embrace these technologies which offer new and exciting challenges but with immeasurable opportunities”, said Mahathir in his speech.”
Malaysia being a tropical country is rich with local herbs and medicines has a niche for herbal supplements in Malaysia and with growing demand, the industry currently experiences its highest ever market value of RM 35 billion going into 2021.
From the perspective of economy, Herbee aims to magnify revenues for farmers and raw material suppliers by broadening the market of the herbal industry by leveraging the abundance of our natural resources which will eventually increase country’s GDP.
Malaysia as a multicultural country, it has contributed to the uniqueness of herbal industry which sees combinations and blends which are the original traditional medicine of Malay rempah-ratus, Chinese Traditional Medicine and Indian Ayurvedic Treatment which has been practised for decades.
The tradition of herbal based ingredients has enabled people to establish plenty of products and employ them to upgrade their lifestyle. Thus, it shows that the joint venture between natural herbs and biotechnology has created many original products and it has begun a long time ago but it is time to move forward with the advancement in technology.
“We aspire to move parallel with digitalization. By integrating technology in our research and the development we are quite confident that we will be able to participate effectively in the future as research publications on herbal products experience a steady increase in reputable journals”, said Mahathir.
He is confident that Herbee will bring in an insightful marketplace, an opportunity for a healthy competition between the industries, boost the GDP and move to raise awareness about the herbal industry.
“I believe Herbee will provide Malaysia the drive to reach an anticipated level not only locally but globally as well”, he said added.
He said Herbee will make Malaysia a potential leading country to develop international standards for herbal and traditional products. – PD [/ihc-hide-content]
