SHAH ALAM – When the diabolical pandemic first hit, the issue of food security came into sharper focus as the lockdown presented unprecedented challenges.
For example, it led to a sudden excess in supply due to the drop in demand as movement restrictions were implemented and restaurants, hotels, food outlets were forced to close.
Farmers have had to dump their fresh produce, leading to staggering amounts of agricultural waste.
But as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining.
E-petani was established during the lockdown to help provide a solution for farmers who grappled with selling and distributing their fresh produce.
Its co-founder, May Teh said: "E-Petani did not start as a business at first, it was initially built to help farmers as they came to us, asking us to help increase their sales during the pandemic.
"But the platform continues to function and grow organically thanks to the supportive community who helped us grow E-petani to what it is today,” she said in the latest episode of Bang For Your Buck on Sinar Daily.
May likens E-petani as the metaverse of vegetables. They have a range of over 500 kinds of fresh produce including vegetables from lettuces, radishes, carrots, tomatoes and others which are supplied to customers online through various channels.
What differs E-Petani from other brands and their business strategy against big hypermarkets is that they pride themselves as the neighbourhood cloud grocer where you can just order and they will send the fresh products to your door in less than 45 minutes.
With the threat of Covid-19 and its variants, especially at this moment, it became a convenient platform for the customers to get their fresh products without having to risk going out of their house to the hypermarket.
To ensure its freshness for delivery, the fresh produce are delivered from the farm to its outlets located in OUG Parklane, Taman Taiping, TTDI and Sunway Damansara, catering to neighbourhoods in this area.
In the new episode of Bang For Your Buck, Sinar Daily joined May for an adventurous journey in Cameron Highlands as she showed the whole process of how the fresh products from the farm have been grown, packed and delivered right to the outlets.
Growing a business, what more during the pandemic was not an easy feat as they faced a lot of challenges as the unpredictable weather, landslides and labour shortage.
When asked about the direction of the brand for the next five years, she stated that they will expand their territory and continue to provide fresh products for their customers no matter the situation.
"Five years is a long journey ahead but we are looking to open around 10 outlets in Malaysia,” she said with a smile.
"Gradually with the support of the community for us and us supporting the farmers, we want to reach out to more neighbourhoods so that the customers can have our outlets near them with fresh products and speedy delivery,” she added.
Check out the latest episode of Bang For Your Buck out today on Sinar Daily.