Korean unicorn startup Woowa Brothers announced that it had invested $1.5 million in Southeast Asia’s (SEA) leading online shopping companion, iPrice Group. The food tech company, Woowa Brothers, attracted by the huge growth potential in the SEA digital sector, has been striking startup investments in the region since 2019.
With interest to participate in the fast-growing e-commerce sector, Woowa decided to fund iPrice given its robust performance and unique position in the industry as a preeminent e-commerce aggregator platform.
“As the SEA’s e-commerce market develops, the competition among e-commerce platforms is intensifying, and the number of sellers is increasing. We believe that iPrice’s role of helping users find the right platform and save money will continue to be vital to the region,” said Woowa Senior Investment Associate Joshua Dhong.
A shopping platform that helps the user save money
Woowa Brothers investment is the second funding received by the iPrice Group, the region’s top e-commerce aggregator, amidst the global pandemic as it works towards a Series C funding round.
iPrice, a Kuala Lumpur based shopping companion, offers shoppers the widest selection of products and brands, provided by hundreds of partners in Southeast Asia. iPrice wants to bring a greater level of transparency, convenience, and trust to consumers in SEA to help consumers save money. Instead of going through multiple marketplaces to find the best deal, users of iPrice can instantly access six (6) billion offers from more than two (2) million sellers on a single platform. They can save money by comparing products, prices, sellers’ reputation, and delivery conditions all in one place.
“Consumers increasingly expect shopping experiences embedded in their phones – be it in various apps or even in the native camera apps for visual shopping,” said iPrice Group Chief Executive Officer Paul Brown-Kenyon. Continuing, “We, therefore, built a product to bring e-commerce to those places, becoming the prime partner for leading platforms and super apps in the region.”
Currently, iPrice has successful partnerships with the likes of Home Credit (Indonesia), Thairath (Thailand), GoRewards (Philippines), Boost (Malaysia), ViSenze (Singapore), or for example, SmartPay (Vietnam).
Woowa Brothers and Foodpanda are both parts of a Germany-based online food-delivery service, Delivery Hero. Now the door is left open for additional partnership opportunities between the two organizations and iPrice in the future. However, any form of partnership was not part of this investment.
With this funding in place, iPrice is working towards a Series C funding round. The Malaysian-based company will utilize this to refine further its product and accelerate the rollout of partnerships.
