Malaysian startup for mobile charging troubleshooting products – Wired PR Lifestyle Story
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When Cheok Ming Jin, Chik Sheng Fei and Lim Thol Yong released their first product Charby Sdn Bhd (Charby) In December 2017, they were already dedicated to creating problem-solving inventions.
The first prototype was Charby Sense, a smart cable that automatically shuts off the device when its battery is full. To be sure They initially invested RM100K it has been worth developing.
Since then, the product has been shipped to more than 82 countries, and CEO Ming Jin told the Vulcan Post in a catchy interview that they are still grateful for Charby’s subsequent growth.
The traction it attracted allowed the technology launch to continue to create new products in the last 4 years. So we know the growth that Charby has had since.
Focusing on a niche for effective accessibility
From a single charging cable, Charby now carries a bunch of MagSafe accessories, cables, chargers, and more.
Buy Charby accessories VP Label at an exclusive price now:
But the industry of these accessories is constantly innovating at a rapid pace, so how does the team continue?
Ming Jin shared that they simply need to keep their ears on the ground in the latest technology and market trends.
Following the tech community, reviewing Kickstarter campaigns, reading Amazon product reviews, and of course listening to customer feedback are all part of the course in their line of work.
“We understood that, as a startup, we lack the advantage of a large market capital to compete in this particularly competitive space.”
“That’s why we chose to focus on meeting some of our needs or niches better than our competitors. Then these niches became our mission: to make loading safe, fast and simple, ”Ming Jin described.
Charby also believes in a way to build long-term relationships with clients.
Instead of imposing barriers to warranty claims, a shorter warranty registration window, or paying customers for international return shipping, Charby went the other way. It has a zero registration window and covers customer return shipping costs when they make a claim.
Ming Jin shared that this effort to build customer trust and confidence has paid off, not only because Charby has a wide written appreciation, but because 17% of customers make more than 6 Charby purchases in their lifetime.
From local rejection to international reception
Looking at Charby’s passenger, who would have predicted that this startup would take over the global market with a smart charging cable, especially when the first investment proposals were twice rejected?
No one who will be immersed in self-pity for long, however, the Charby team took their first invention to Indiegogo, an international crowdfunding site.
There, the campaign began in the U.S. market and garnered a lot of attention among the media, influencers, and vendors. This allowed Charby to reach out to customers in other countries as well.
The group quickly established partnerships with local Chinese and U.S. vendors and compliance companies to meet international demand.
Today, more than 60% of Charby’s revenue comes from developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada, France, and Japan, and the Malaysian market accounts for less than 18% of sales.
Becoming a lesson in sharing failures
Growing a tech startup (or any other startup, for that matter) is definitely full of experimentation. Given the career of Ming Jin and his team so far, we needed to know what advice he could give to other technology companies.
1. Examine your return on investment (ROI) and plan for mitigation before investing in any project.
“We have spent many months building products that have never seen the light of day, including a cordless suction bank, a magnet-arranged cable, and a battery-saving app,” Ming Jin shared.
“The main reason for the failure of these projects is that we underestimate the complexity, making the newly adjusted cost unjustifiable.” In other cases, they underestimated the time it took to create them, which cost them their first move.
As I said before, the industry is growing at a rapid pace, and competitors with more funding and manpower will certainly be faster to create similar products.
2. Make things easier for customers.
“Back then, our design philosophy was to build the most powerful and functional products possible. We tried to put 13 functions in one cable, and yet we have a lot of customers who didn’t even know that some of the features they used for 2 years existed. “
“Some of the increased value of the products comes with inconveniences that increase costs and warranty rates. Instead, we should remove features that do not add value to customers,” Ming Jin said.
Being simpler also means using simpler marketing messages related to the end benefits. For example, with Charby’s Orbit series, they make it clear that the ultimate goal is to help customers easily charge and assemble devices in a second.
All the other features of the additional orbits contribute to this ultimate goal. “Being more confident makes it easier for customers to understand your value proposition, make decisions faster and [it] it could also mean shorter service time [for the company]”He shared.
3. Use the many crowdfunding platforms available.
To date, Charby leverages crowdfunding platforms when it launches products with higher innovation value because they are more likely to get funding, the team has learned.
“We’ve seen campaigns that have an extra high price for their product, have long delivery dates, or less attractive presentations and videos, but are able to successfully fund their products when they are innovative,” Ming Jin said.
Thus, it is recommended that creators with innovative products try to launch on crowdfunding platforms.
“Not only has the crowdfunding community helped us meet the minimum initial number of requests, they are also willing to respond to surveys and give suggestions and feedback to the campaign, which is not easy to achieve.”
The house is still where the heart is
In line with the task of making charging safe, fast and simple, one of the products the team is working on has a 5,000 mAh capacity electric bank the size of a MagSafe concave.
Users can easily carry and tie it to the back of a phone, and charge a Qi-enabled phone and an Apple Watch at the same time.
In the field of marketing, Ming Jin said that Charby would like to change his approach to be more local. This would help it to become a trusted charging brand and become a major player in Malaysian consumer electronics.
We believe that the consumer electronics charging industry has stayed here and will move forward in the coming decades. With the rise of laptops, IoTs, drones, robots, and metabarsis, more devices will be battery-powered. We need to make sure that we stay ahead of the curve and continually improve our products and businesses to increase our market share.
Cheok Ming Jin, co-founder and CEO of Charby.
Of course, Charby expects competition from players who have achieved economies of scale. However, instead of competing head-to-head, it will continue to fill its niche market and Malaysia’s central market segment.
Once the foundations are laid here, Ming Jin is confident that Charby will be able to take on other markets in Singapore and ASEAN.
Featured Image Credit: Charby
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