Joshua Kwah believes Zig must earn customer loyalty through this first before using discounts

For decades, ComfortDelGro has existed as a terrestrial certainty in an ever-shifting urban landscape. It is an institution built on the unglamorous mechanics of transport — steel, rubber, and decades of operational ubiquity across global markets. Yet, when the digital tide surged, legacy transport giants found themselves marooned by nimble tech natives. 

Enter Zig, ComfortDelGro’s digital avatar, tasked with collapsing the distance between old-world reliability and new-world agility. It is a transformation narrative that perfectly captures the essence of a new corporate form: preserving the core weight of a legacy brand while completely reinventing its external geometry.

When Joshua Kwah stepped into the role of vice president of Marketing at Zig, the mandate looked deceptively straightforward. On paper, it was a classic corporate exercise in cosmetic consolidation. 

“The problem I set out to solve was bringing the rental, driver, B2B and rider businesses together under one brand identity,” Kwah reflects, his tone entirely devoid of the usual glossy public relations spin. “I thought I was walking into a communications and marketing job. Unifying the brands within the company, sharpening the visual identity, and driving ridership. That’s the brief on paper, and it’s not wrong. There was just a whole lot more work behind these.”

Shifting the internal soil

The sceptic might look at such restructuring efforts and see little more than a coat of fresh paint on an ageing chassis. Can a decades-old transport conglomerate truly pivot to the breakneck speed of a tech startup, or is it merely playing catch-up in a saturated market? Kwah quickly realised that true transformation could not be achieved by mere advertising campaigns. It required a deep, sometimes uncomfortable excavation of the company’s internal culture.

“The real job underneath was actually part people work and part company soul-searching,” Kwah explains. “What does this company actually stand for? What has it earned the right to say? Finding competitive gaps, being the voice of the customer, using research to surface what people actually need, building the team, and finding the right partners. All of that before a single piece of marketing goes out.”

This structural soul-searching exposed the friction between legacy systems and digital ambitions. The temptation for many traditional firms is to discard their past entirely, chasing the mercurial trends of the tech sector. Kwah, however, resisted this total abandonment, opting instead to build upon the mother brand’s hard-earned foundation.

“Brand isn’t just how a company speaks or looks. It’s how it operates. The rigour, the reliability, what it does when nobody’s watching,” Kwah notes. 

“The brand outside has to be the same thing as living on the inside. So the first job was figuring out what was already true about the mother brand, what it had genuinely earned over decades, and building from that. ComfortDelGro has real depth. Operational excellence, multi-market know-how, a track record of reliability most companies would kill for.”

Yet translating that industrial heft into a nimble consumer application proved daunting. “That translation was the hardest part,” Kwah admits. “The organisation was open to doing things differently. But the systems already in place made moving quickly genuinely difficult. So we had to find a way.”

That determination soon became the internal culture. And somewhere along the way, it clicked that this was exactly the story Zig needed to tell. “Because why does someone reach for Zig?” Kwah questions rhetorically. “They’re stuck, something’s gone sideways, they need out. We’ll find them a way. What we were living inside was the same thing we were solving for our customers.”

The subversion of the discount

In the hyper-competitive ride-hailing ecosystem, the standard playbook is simple to the point of exhaustion: burn capital, slash prices, and buy temporary loyalty through algorithmic incentives. To question this premise is to invite corporate heresy. Yet Kwah chose to challenge this default mechanism, arguing that continuous promotions merely mask systemic product deficiencies.

“There were a few decisions that altered our direction,” Kwah says. “But the one that changed everything else was the decision to go deep on who we were actually serving. To really understand them and commit to serving them well. Once I made that call, everything else followed. The first thing it surfaced was an honest look at where we were falling short. Who were we failing, and how?” 

That led Zig as an organisation to put real focus on the ride and rental experiences themselves. Faster response times, better customer care, more cars where and when people needed them, pricing that made sense at the right moment, and making sure drivers are supported.

By focusing on operational rectitude over superficial marketing ploys, Zig began to establish a different relationship with its audience. “Once that foundation was clearer, it gave me the footing to bring a different perspective on promotions,” Kwah argues.

“That they shouldn’t be a desperate default. If the product and service aren’t solid, promos don’t fix anything. They just paper over the gaps. The shift was making sure there was something worth coming back to first, and then using offers more surgically, directed at the people who genuinely needed them most.”

With the functional basics secured, Kwah took an unconventional strategic gamble, introducing humour and narrative warmth into a category traditionally defined by sterile utility. The resulting campaign leaned into the awkward, human realities of needing a sudden exit. 

“The brief was simple: if mobility is a daily necessity, our channels should be something people actually look forward to,” Kwah reveals. “That led to an honest idea. They give you rides; we get you out. Out of the jam, the bad situation, the awkward moment. Hot takes on the most awkward situations you’ve ever needed a ride to escape from.”

One of his campaigns even turned into a mini viral moment. But the performance wasn’t the point. “The point was that in a commoditised industry, where people expect nothing surprising, entertainment and warmth are genuinely disruptive.”

Redefining value exchange

Critics might argue that marketing executives often mistake internal agility for external revolution. Can an app truly transcend its status as a utility? Kwah believes the answer lies in dismantling the industry’s outdated assumptions regarding consumer behaviour. He views mobility not as a linear transaction, but as a broader platform for life on the move.

“The whole category has converged on the same mechanic. Earn a ride, get something off the next one. It works. But it’s also very sanitised. It keeps people coming back without actually adding anything to their lives,” Kwah observes. 

“What I think is underexplored is a different kind of value exchange. Look at what Amazon has built around Prime, or how some players have started layering services into the journey beyond the ride itself. The insight isn’t complicated — people on the move have intent, a moment of attention, and a destination in mind. That’s genuinely valuable to a lot of businesses.”

Navigating this systemic pivot requires immense personal fortitude, an attribute Kwah traces back to his diverse background in fitness entrepreneurship, corporate scale-ups, and military training. 

“The loneliness of conviction — I’ve lived that before,” Kwah concludes. “What I didn’t fully anticipate this time was the emotional labour. Because the market is reactive. There are variables baked into every single day and a lot of unpredictability around what you’ll have to deal with by noon. Trust the training, and adapt to the next course of action. In the water, when things go sideways, you don’t freeze. You move to the next step. Trail running does something similar for me. You get tired, but you learn to read what’s happening and adjust your pace and stride to keep moving. That’s the whole thing.”

Photography: Lawrence Teo
Art direction: Ashruddin Sani
Styling: Dolphin Yeo
Grooming: Angel Gwee, using Chanel and Davines

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