Indonesian e-commerce giant Bukalapak has acquired a majority stake in Southeast Asian price comparison platform iPrice, according to a statement on Tuesday.
The investment will allow iPrice to accelerate growth by leveraging the synergies between the two groups. iPrice will continue to operate as an independent entity, maintaining its neutral position towards users and working with a broad set of merchants and sellers, the statement said.
Over the last eight years, iPrice has become a niche marketplace, helping more than 100 million consumers across seven countries in Southeast Asia in 2022. Its proprietary technology surfs the best deals and discounts from more than 8 billion offers in a market featuring a vast array of sale events and hard-to-navigate discount mechanisms.
Based in Malaysia, iPrice was founded by David Chmelar and Heinrich Wendel. “I’ve known David and the team for years and have always been excited about their work; then recently the opportunity emerged to work together more closely,” said Willix Halim, CEO of Bukalapak.
The rapidly cooling fundraising market last year forced iPrice to scale back on several aspects of its business and downsize the team substantially. It transformed to explore new ways to grow its businesses cost-effectively. This transition will now be accelerated by Bukalapak group’s footing in a diverse set of verticals opening up many new opportunities.
Heinrich Wendel, Co-founder of iPrice, said, “We are excited to join forces with Bukalapak and benefit from the group’s synergies. This partnership will allow us to expand our services to help even more users save money across new verticals, like gaming, and geographies, like Australia.”
Shifting focus
As e-commerce in Southeast Asia has been growing rapidly over the last decade, individual verticals have become significant business opportunities in themselves. Observing this trend, Bukalapak decided to shift its focus from competing head-to-head with other marketplaces to building or acquiring niche marketplaces and accelerating their growth.
With 20.3 trillion rupiah of cash and cash equivalents as of 2022, Bukalapak has more than enough engines to buy or create new entities. Teddy Oetomo, President of Bukalapak, told DealStreetAsia that there are many businesses in the group that could help them grow faster.
“But the key is to identify the exceptional ones that are a good fit with our existing operations,” he said. It could be product-related or infrastructure related, he added.
The company will also create new verticals in the coming years and have a whole team dedicated to identifying those new opportunities and the best ways to bring them to market.
Bukalapak started its business as a marketplace platform and has expanded to several businesses other such as Mitra Bukalapak (helping grocery retailers in their digital onboarding); Buka Pengadaan (B2B marketplace); Buka Send (delivery services); Buka Tabungan (digital bank account onboarding); B Money (investment); and Itemku (gaming).
In October last year, Bukalapak invested $1.5 million in Indonesia’s micro-warehousing startup Crewdible through a Singapore-registered special purpose vehicle (SPV).