Last-mile logistics in Cambodia just got a whole heap easier after a new joint venture entered the market.

Making things curious is that one partner, Cambodia’s Post Media, is from a declining sector – print media – while the other, Australian software firm Yojee, is from the ascendant IT sector.

Yojee is a platform technology company that provides logistics and supply chain IT resources to companies in Southeast Asia and Australia. Operating on the plug-and-play platform, it is simple to use and rapidly scalable.

“This means it’s just install an app on a smart phone and then business as usual,” Alex Odom, Post Media’s CEO, said in a statement announcing the new venture.

The Phnom Penh Post is Cambodia’s largest print media and news organization with 1.5 million readers, a number of whom are still taking their news the traditional way, on paper. This is delivered to them by Post Media by trucks, cars, motorbikes and bicycles.

Not only does Post Media have a distribution network, but its prominence as a web brand via its heavily visited sites made it an attractive partner for Yojee.

The two companies have, via an MOU, set up an alliance that will see Yojee build a national delivery network across Cambodia using its technology skills, while Post Media brings the customer base and skills in logistics and newspaper delivery.

Without realizing it, Post Media had been operating Cambodia’s best logistics network, one which will likely grow through its collaboration with Yojee. Yojee’s pitch to Post Media was simple: “We can start to fill your vehicles by going piggy back,” Ed Clarke, managing director of Yojee, told Asia Cargo News in an interview.

This offers a double change to the industry.

First, it means Post Media vans will be carrying revenue-generating freight and will be offering a higher level of service, including more transparency and more security, Clarke said. Cambodian logistics have by and large lacked reach, capability and next-day delivery, although Post Media went further than most by delivering newspapers throughout most of Cambodia.

Cooperation with Yojee will set up a system with networks that are secured and digitally-managed and which will use existing resources and partners. “It will be a high-frequency digital network of small and medium packages, anything below a suitcase,” said. “The next competition is the Cambodian post office.”

To emphasize that the delivery service is not the postal service, it will be known as Yojee from the start rather than incorporating Post Media into the marketing name. “It will be branded as Yojee, that will be from day one,” said Clarke.

What’s more, the IT side that Yojee brings which can be accessed via a smart phone, makes the delivery more secure. 

“By using Yojee technology it gives the booming freight market and other businesses a digital entry point to deliver through real-time tracking all the way. The message really resonated with Post Media.” Clarke said in the announcement statement.

For Cambodia, this has big implications as it means the country now has not so much a traditional last-mile delivery service, but something more up to the moment. “We are looking at an e-commerce distribution system that proves it can reach a lot of the people of Cambodia,” Clarke told Asia Cargo News.

It could go further still, as Yojee is already looking at drones. Clarke says that different forms of drones could be used in coming years, as well as autonomous vehicles.

Also upcoming and already in use is blockchain, a way to facilitate secure online transactions – important in helping spread ecommerce. According to Wikipedia, a blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger recording transactions across many computers in such a way the registered transactions cannot be altered retroactively. Participants can then verify and audit transactions in an inexpensive manner.

“Instead of having the traditional one server to manage platforms and software, we use blockchain as a distributed system where you have thousands of records of the same truth. It’s indisputable and it allows a high level of trust,” said Clarke.