Bukalapak, a leading e-commerce company in Indonesia, has announced that it has acquired a majority stake in iPrice, Southeast Asia’s foremost price comparison platform. Through this strategic investment, iPrice will have the opportunity to accelerate its growth by leveraging the synergies between the two groups.
Over the last decade, e-commerce in Southeast Asia has been rapidly growing, leading to individual verticals becoming big enough to specialize in. Recognizing this trend, Bukalapak has shifted its focus from competing head-to-head with other marketplaces to building or acquiring niche marketplaces and accelerating their growth.
In the past 8 years, iPrice has been building such a niche marketplace. Its focus on price-conscious consumers has earned it a loyal place in the hearts of shoppers in Southeast Asia. In 2022, iPrice helped more than 100 million consumers across 7 countries save money. Its proprietary technology surfaces the best deals and discounts from over 8 billion offers in a market featuring a vast array of sale events and hard-to-navigate discount mechanisms.
“We are excited about working with iPrice and unlocking the platform’s full potential. With Bukalapak’s extensive expertise in e-commerce and iPrice’s loyal user base and proprietary technology, we believe that we can achieve great success,” said Willix Halim, CEO of Bukalapak.
iPrice investors, including Itochu and Naver, welcome the deal. The fundraising market cooled down considerably last year, forcing 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.
“We are thrilled 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,” said Heinrich Wendel, Co-founder of iPrice.
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.
12 April 2023
