The iPrice team
Indonesia’s leading e-commerce company Bukalapak has acquired a majority stake in iPrice Group, which owns and operates a slew of online price comparison platforms across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Australia.
iPrice says it aids shoppers by comparing prices, promotions and seller discounts across 8 billion offers from thousands of sellers and merchants. The group — backed by Woowa Brothers, ITOCHU, Global Bain, LINE Ventures, and Naver, among others — claims it serves over 125 million unique users across eight countries.
In the wake of the acquisition, e27 quickly caught up with iPrice Co-Founder Heinrich Wendel to learn more about the deal, the synergy, data privacy, and its goals.
Below are the edited excerpts from the interview:
Can you tell us more about the acquisition and what it means for the future of iPrice? What is the size of the deal? Is it an all-cash or a cash-and-equity deal?
iPrice will continue to operate and grow as an independent company. It will leverage Bukalapak’s deep e-commerce experience to unlock the full value of its base of over 100 million users. We can’t disclose the financial details.
Also Read: iPrice Group raises US$5M from Itochu, Global Brain unit
How long has this deal been in the works? When did the discussion between the two firms begin?
We (Bukalapak CEO Willix Halim and iPrice Co-Founders David Chmelar and Heinrich Wendel) first met many years ago, sharing a common passion for aggregator businesses and organic customer acquisition strategies for an open ecosystem approach.
Operating a platform that reaches over 100 million users and crunches billions of products every night comes with a significant cost base. After iPrice had to scale back some of its more long-term bets last June, given bad financial market conditions, we knew that we would need a partner to unlock the true value of our assets. iPrice got in touch with Bukalapak again. Over a few months, a concrete deal emerged.
Naturally, there was a lot of uncertainty during this time, and we are happy to have come out on the other side stronger than before.
What will happen to iPrice’s existing investors, such as Itochu, Woowa, Global Bain, LINE etc.? Did they get an exit with this deal?
iPrice’s existing investors are excited about the synergies the deal offers for the business, particularly the ability to unlock the full value out of iPrice’s over 100 million-sized user base.
Could you explain the synergy between the two companies? What does it mean for your Indonesian consumers?
A few years ago, Bukalapak shifted its focus from competing head-to-head with other marketplaces to building or acquiring niche marketplaces and accelerating their growth. It has done that successfully, for example, with Mitra Bukalapak, Itemku and others. Bukalapak will apply this strategy to help iPrice unlock the full value of its user base. This will unlock even more opportunities for consumers in Indonesia and beyond to save money when they shop online.
With Bukalapak’s support, what are iPrice Group’s goals for expansion into new markets or industries, and what kind of challenges do you anticipate in pursuing those goals?
We are concretely looking into the gaming vertical and Australia as a new exciting market. Based on initial research, the consumer demand in these verticals/geographies seems promising. However, of course, it still has to be proven that these can contribute meaningfully to the business’s top line.
Can you discuss any recent or upcoming partnerships or collaborations that iPrice Group has with other companies in the e-commerce or tech space?
Also Read: Woowa Brothers injects US$1.5M into Malaysian shopping aggregator iPrice
As an independent voice of the consumer, iPrice works with more than a thousand e-commerce partners across the region. We are continuously observing shifts in the market, especially trends like unbundling and brand.com, very closely and working with merchants to ensure that we always have the best offering available for users of our platform.
How does iPrice Group approach data privacy and security issues, and what measures do you take to protect your users’ personal information?
As a platform that drives transparency, convenience and trust for consumers in Southeast Asia, iPrice must protect the users’ personal information. In general, our approach allows us to minimise data collection as much as possible in the first place. At the same time, we follow all applicable security and privacy standards to safeguard our user’s personal information.
How does iPrice Group stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the e-commerce and tech industries, and what strategies do you use to stay ahead of the curve?
One of our core expertise is organic traffic acquisition at scale. We constantly monitor millions of data points freely available online and crunch them with our proprietary big data technology. In addition to that, we are in continuous conversation with our broad base of merchants to understand how trends are evolving. We have operationalised these capabilities to the extent that we believe they provide a competitive advantage to us.
What are iPrice Group’s goals for the next year or two, and how do you plan to continue growing and evolving as a company?
Our mission is to help consumers save money. Over the years, we have continuously expanded our product portfolio in new ways to enable that. We are excited that with the help of Bukalapak we can continue to double down on that mission and further solidify our position in the minds of SEA’s price-conscious online shoppers.
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The post ‘We needed a partner to unlock the true value of our assets amid economic crisis’: iPrice Co-Founder on Bukalapak deal appeared first on e27.