Disruption Brings About Greater Quality, do you agree?

Disruption of industries is happening around the world, and it does not spare Singapore. Do you think disruption can bring better quality to the services and products?

We’ll explore disruptions in various industries in Singapore.

Transportation

What is the next best mode of transportation to get around Singapore after our amazing public transport MRT and bus?

Ride-hailing and ridesharing service offers an alternative mode of transport that is significantly cheaper than usual Taxi rides. This disruption within the transportation industry is here to stay because it provides an affordable yet convenient solution in our lives.

Finance

Fintech, which stands for Financial Technology is the greatest disruptor in the finance industry. New technologies are being rolled out and impacting the industry at a fast pace.

Cryptocurrency is just one among the many; it is a digital currency that decentralised control as opposed to centralised electronic money and central banking systems.

This means that cryptocurrency has no centralised bank that controls the currency like how our Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) controlling our Singapore Dollars. Decentralisation works because of the distributed ledger technology, typically a blockchain, that serves as a public financial transaction database.

The ledger records each transaction and the more users there are, the more complex and harder for hackers to break in. Cryptocurrency has caused a big boom over the market due to its decentralised characteristic that allows infinite growth or fall. Bitcoin is just one of the examples, investors paid only a few cents during the initial phase, and the value of Bitcoin peaked in 2017 when it hit more than SGD20,000 per coin.

Real Estate

Proptech may be a relatively new term than Fintech but Property Technology is also shaking up the property industry as well.

In Singapore, Ohmyhome is one of the very few pioneers that have disrupted the property market with technology. Ohmyhome app is the only listing portal that does not serve the property agents but helps direct buyers and sellers, tenants and landlords to connect and transact directly without the need for a property agent. The app responds to the lack of a medium for sellers to market their homes the DIY way.

For sellers who still prefer engaging a property agent, Ohmyhome is offering fixed fee agent service from $2,888.

So, does disruption bring about higher quality?
It depends on your mindset. From the existing business’ point of view, the emergence of new firms is stealing your market share.

However, from the consumer’s perspective, there are more alternatives now. One old fact is still true that consumers shape the businesses. When your company is short-changing your consumers, competitors will emerge in no time.

Hence, for an existing business to remain attractive, the viable option is to innovate. These changes would only bring about greater quality.

To illustrate that, think about these scenarios:
Without ride-hailing and ridesharing service, we would still be taking a taxi.

Without Ohmyhome, we would still be paying a hefty commission of 2% to the property agents than doing it ourselves or engaging an agent at a fixed rate of $2888.

For Ohmyhome, it is all about defying the status quo in the property sector as it aims to keep up the real estate industry standards and provide an alternative to homeowners, buyers and tenants during property transactions.

Through competition, businesses can then provide a better quality of service or products to consumers.

Watch Ohmyhome CEO, Rhonda Wong’s view on this issue.

How about you, what is your thought on this issue?

Sources: HDB (2018),
The Straits Times (2018)

Contributor: Leow Wei Min