How Digi Caters to the Community
How DiGi Caters to the Community
By Victor Siow, Sumitra Nair (DiGi Head of CR) and Tan Oon Keat (DiGi Head of Migrant Services)
DiGi Telecommunications (DiGi) is a mobile service provider in Malaysia, owned in majority by Telenor ASA of Norway, with a 49% shareholding. DiGi provides a variety of mobile communication services, including postpaid and prepaid voice, SMS, international roaming, international calling card and mobile broadband. DiGi was a relatively late entrant into the mobile telephony market. By the time DiGi entered the market, Celcom and Maxis had already captured a significant market share in the Malaysian industry.
Perhaps because of this, DiGi chose to break with convention and focus on the pre-paid market and rural areas, where the other two operators have not dominated. This proved immensely popular, especially with migrant workers and transient visitors, as well as students who could not afford the monthly subscription of the normal mobile networks. Today, DiGi is widely acknowledged as the market leader in pre-paid calls and no-frills communications service.
Over the past few years, DiGi has aimed to integrate socially and environmentally responsible practices across business and organizations. Their corporate responsibility (CR) strategy addresses three areas: minimizing environmental footprint, engaging with community, and driving integrity and empowerment in the DiGi workplace and marketplace. In this case study, the focus will be on the ‘CR-in-products’ or social products that DiGi is offering to lower income and migrant segments in Malaysia. There are elements that fall in the ‘social products’ category — one is the services and packages highly targeted to the migrant segments, while the other is the mobile money remittance solution called DiGiREMIT.
Serving the Migrant Market
According to the Malaysian Immigration statistics in 2008, there are 1.639 million migrants in the country which comprise 6.47% of the total population.
By Victor Siow, Sumitra Nair (DiGi Head of CR) and Tan Oon Keat (DiGi Head of Migrant Services)
DiGi Telecommunications (DiGi) is a mobile service provider in Malaysia, owned in majority by Telenor ASA of Norway, with a 49% shareholding. DiGi provides a variety of mobile communication services, including postpaid and prepaid voice, SMS, international roaming, international calling card and mobile broadband. DiGi was a relatively late entrant into the mobile telephony market. By the time DiGi entered the market, Celcom and Maxis had already captured a significant market share in the Malaysian industry.
Perhaps because of this, DiGi chose to break with convention and focus on the pre-paid market and rural areas, where the other two operators have not dominated. This proved immensely popular, especially with migrant workers and transient visitors, as well as students who could not afford the monthly subscription of the normal mobile networks. Today, DiGi is widely acknowledged as the market leader in pre-paid calls and no-frills communications service.
Over the past few years, DiGi has aimed to integrate socially and environmentally responsible practices across business and organizations. Their corporate responsibility (CR) strategy addresses three areas: minimizing environmental footprint, engaging with community, and driving integrity and empowerment in the DiGi workplace and marketplace. In this case study, the focus will be on the ‘CR-in-products’ or social products that DiGi is offering to lower income and migrant segments in Malaysia. There are elements that fall in the ‘social products’ category — one is the services and packages highly targeted to the migrant segments, while the other is the mobile money remittance solution called DiGiREMIT.
Serving the Migrant Market
According to the Malaysian Immigration statistics in 2008, there are 1.639 million migrants in the country which comprise 6.47% of the total population.