Malaysia/Indonesia
Bukalapak, one of Indonesia’s leading e-commerce companies, announced today that it has acquired a majority stake in iPrice, Southeast Asia’s leading price comparison platform. Through this strategic investment, iPrice has the opportunity to accelerate its growth by leveraging the synergies between the two groups.
As e-commerce in Southeast Asia has been growing rapidly over the last decade individual verticals have become big enough to specialize in. 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.
Over the last 8 years, iPrice has been building such a niche marketplace. Its relentless focus on the price-conscious consumers earned it a loyal place in Southeast Asia’s shoppers’ hearts. In 2022, it helped more than 100 million consumers across 7 countries in SouthEast Asia save money. Its proprietary technology surfaces 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.
“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. “With Bukalapak’s extensive expertise in e-commerce and iPrice’s loyal userbase and proprietary technology, we are confident that we can unlock the platform’s full potential.”
iPrice investors, amongst them Itochu and Naver, welcome the deal. The rapidly cooling fundraising market of 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 the 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.”
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.
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