CNME Editor Mark Forker sat down with Bell Beh, Group CEO and Co-Founder of BuzzAR, to find out how their unique platform is digitising people, places and payments – and how the company is on a mission to replicate the phenomenal success they have enjoyed in Singapore across the MENA region.
It became very evident early on in my conversation with Bell Beh, that she is an individual that was born to innovate.
Her entrepreneurial spirit is palpable, and as she begins to document the incredible rise of BuzzAR, it feels to me that in many way she is pursuing her own destiny.
Her story, like so many of her contemporaries that came before her was not straightforward.
She left the comfort and security of a high-profile and well-remunerated corporate legal job to start BuzzAR, which showed remarkable bravery, but since she took that big step in 2018, she has never looked back.
Beh revealed that her creativity was unlocked during her job as a compliance counsel at the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which is the jewel in the crown of the Singapore skyline.
“I was very fortunate to receive a scholarship to study at UC Berkely. During my time in California I studied law and technology, and that rather naturally led me to pursue a career in corporate law. However, it was a part-time job as a compliance counsel that I had at Marina Bay Sands that triggered this entrepreneurial and innovative spirit inside of me that until then had been dormant,” said Beh.
Beh said that her CTO at Marina Bay Sands actively encouraged her to create interfaces for the landmark location in Singapore, that attracts thousands of tourists every year, in a bid to enhance the experiences it delivers for their guests.
Beh admitted that the exposure she had in terms of building things from scratch at Marina Bay Sands Hotel, lit the torch-paper and she knew deep down that it was time for her to walkway from a career in corporate law.
“I always loved to design and build things, and my CTO at Marina Bay Sands, who’s background was in gaming design, proactively requested me to build these interactive interfaces for the hotel in order to improve our customer experience. What I discovered very quickly during this process was that I loved building things, and I got much more satisfaction out of doing this than my job in corporate law. The two jobs were at two different ends of the spectrum totally. I liked corporate law, don’t get me wrong, but the thrill of building something from scratch really excited me, and stirred something within me, and I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life every day,” said Beh.
Beh acknowledged that despite her instinct telling her she was doing the right thing, it was still a big risk to walk away from a secure job.
Following a very fruitful meeting with the Singaporean tourism board in San Francisco, BuzzAR was born.
“Look I followed my heart, but it wasn’t a straightforward decision either, it was nuanced, because corporate law is a very good job, with a lot of stability, and you can earn good money in that profession, but again, it was clear to me that I needed to follow my gut instinct and that was guiding me towards setting up my own business, which we now know as BuzzAR. I met the Singaporean tourism board in San Francisco, and that was essentially the starting point for BuzzAR. Our concept was put on a Singaporean accelerator program, and as the say the rest is history,” said Beh.
Beh then went into more detail on what services BuzzAR actually provides for customers in the enterprise space.
Essentially, they created a digital twin that incorporated disruptive technologies such as AI, AR and VR to not only deliver better experiences for those interacting with the interface, but they could also use their platform to directly target consumers.
Having secured a 5-year contract with Marina Bay Sands, BuzzAR was tasked with the responsibility of driving consumers to the hotel, and the consumers in this case were Chinese tourists.
“My former employer, Marina Bay Sands were our first enterprise customer at BuzzAR and they gave us a 5-year contract. Their No.1 demographic target was Chinese tourists, so they wanted us to design a system that would help drive more tourism from China to Marina Bay Sands. What we did was construct a digital twin, which was infused with various technologies such as AI, AR and VR, in order to create a better customer experience platform for consumers to engage with. The digital twin enabled them to play around with the platform and see what Marina Bay Sands could provide them with if they were planning to visit Singapore. We used a number of social media platforms in China to help us market our product. These social media channels would constantly show content that promoted Marina Bay Sands, and the primary objective was to get prospective consumers to consume our content, and get them to think not only do I want to go to Singapore, but I want to go and stay in the Marina Bay Sands hotel,” said Beh.
Beh highlighted the broad range of capabilities that is embedded across the BuzzAR platform and pointed to its ability to drive ‘traffic’ to were their enterprise customers wanted them to.
“It’s a combination of tourism technology and marketing technology that is ultimately designed to drive better experiences and create content that projects Singapore as a destination that people want to visit. One of our core capabilities as a company is to drive traffic, and that is what we do for tourism boards, governments and large hospitality groups such as Marina Bay Sands,” added Beh.
The endorsement of BuzzAR by a global brand like Marina Bay Sands certainly caused others to sit up and take the notice, and as Beh pointed out, there was a domino effect across the market, with other enterprises, particularly those operating in the hospitality space wanting to work with BuzzAR.
“After the success we had at Marina Bay Sands, other entities stood up and took notice of what our platform was capable of achieving for those who deployed it. Global hospitality chain Millenium Hotels Group reached out to us and we engaged in a very successful campaign with them. We saw people from over 100 different countries engaging with that campaign and Millenium Hotels were so happy with our platform because we drove almost 100x ROI for them. When they crunched the numbers at the end of our campaign, we had delivered six digits for them in terms of bookings, and they couldn’t believe the value that our BuzzAR platform yielded for them,” said Beh.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, along with Google has dominated the ad space online, but LinkedIn and X are also seen as effective mediums for driving traffic and consumers to your website to access and purchase your goods and services.
But Meta and Google adverts are not cheap, and if you rely solely on them to drive traffic and revenue to your business, then inevitably you can become beholden to them.
However, according to Beh, a key market differentiator for BuzzAR, and what ultimately makes them stand out from the crowd is the fact that they can facilitate the discovery process, but also enable the booking and payment processes, all at the fraction of the cost of the big social media players.
“It’s not just a price war where we gain an advantage, we are very specialized, and a perfect illustration of that is in relation to how we can drive traffic from the Chinese tourism marketplace to Singapore, or the Middle East. Chinese tourists represent a market cap of $5.7 trillion in terms of spending, so the opportunity is huge and if you want to tap into that then you need BuzzAR. We can help you with the discovery, booking and payment process, we can be your unilateral end-to-end partner. In the current climate, you’ll find companies that will help you with the discovery element, whilst others will assist with the booking and procurement process, but none of them can provide you with discovery, booking and payment all-in-one, but BuzzAR can, and that’s a key market differentiator for us,” said Beh.
BuzzAR have enjoyed remarkable success in Singapore, but now their attentions have turned to the MENA region, and in particular the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who are now really trying to ramp up their tourism economy.
BuzzAR received funding of $1.16 million from HSBC, which will provide them with the platform they need to roll out their operations in Saudi Arabia.
The Group CEO of BuzzAR, highlighted how their go-to-market strategy differs from the one they adopted in the Singaporean marketplace, and said the company was looking ‘beyond’ tourism when it comes to gaining market share across the Kingdom.
“The support we have received from HSBC has been pivotal to us in terms of making headway into the KSA tourism sector. In addition to their unwavering support, they have also helped us open a lot of doors in relation to partnerships across the Kingdom. However, what is different about our go-to-market approach in the KSA compared with Singapore, is that we are less focused on hospitality, and are actually looking at how we can use our platform to drive better experiences and outcomes in the FinTech and banking sectors. In terms of the financing that we received from HSBC, it is predominantly being used to hire local Saudi talent, because the on-the-ground integration of BuzzAR in the KSA is critical to our success. One of the ways we differentiate ourselves from the booking platforms in China is our on-the-ground integration strategy. In the KSA, we have a payment license strategy with Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) to make sure that we have the local wallet for any tourist to pay seamlessly when interacting with our platform, and that really is a hugely significant and important partnership for us,” said Beh.
Another key component in the early initial success of BuzzAR in the KSA, has been its BuzzPay solution.
In a market saturated with FinTech companies, BuzzAR has identified a way that once again enables them to have a competitive advantage on the rest of its market rivals.
“By targeting the tourism industry in the way that we do, we are inadvertently providing incremental volume to the FinTech sector. There are 216 FinTech companies currently operating in the KSA, so it is a saturated marketplace. Typically, they are focused locally, but if you look at our business model at BuzzAR then you can see that we are proactively bringing people into the local economy through our platform. We bring external people through the MENA region and these people are spending, and the extra volume we are bringing in is inevitably contributing hugely to the growth of the GDP of all nations across the Gulf region. We are also divesting funds from investment we have received from HSBC towards hiring experts in the FinTech and business development space in order to enable us to integrate effectively into the local economy. We view tourism and FinTech as standing side-by-side, you can’t have one without the other, it doesn’t work if the two are not aligned,” said Beh.
The dynamic and charismatic figurehead of BuzzAR concluded a wonderful interview by highlighting the unique capabilities of Bae, it’s AI-powered companion that she believes will become your ‘must-have’ travel buddy.
“BAE stands for before anyone else. We like that name and we felt it was quirky, and the concept behind it is when you travel to a foreign country it can be hard to navigate yourself around when you don’t speak the local language. I remember arriving a few years ago in Riyadh, and it sort of dawned on me that everyone is speaking Arabic here, and a lot of the locals don’t have any English. I felt like I needed a travel buddy, a companion, somebody that was close to me, and it doesn’t need to be someone physical, it can be digital, like an AI companion, and this essentially is where BAE was born. BAE can recommend places for me to visit, help me get a taxi to where I want to go, essentially BAE is a technology that is ultimately designed to make your travelling experience a seamless one and that is devoid of friction. We want users to view BAE from a relational standpoint, traditionally in technology it has always been very transactional, but we want users to really have a relationship with BAE and view them as a companion, and see them as human. We want to make AI an integral part of lives. BAE can be useful, fun and convenient for you,” said Beh.
