Bangkok--29 Sep--Brand Now
Priceza, the leading shopping search engine and price comparison shopping platform in Southeast Asia, announced at a press conference today that it is joining forces with a strong Series B investor, German global media giant Hubert Burda Media (HBM), to secure its rising success and competitive power within the region's rapidly growing e-commerce industry.
Priceza currently has a presence in six regional markets, dominating in Thailand and Indonesia, with a combined 13 million visits a month. Traffic to Priceza Thailand numbers 7.5 million a month or over 200,000 a day and the website has seen a 100% growth from 2015 to 2016. The platform has a product database of over 59 million items across six countries.
Thanawat Malabuppha, Priceza's CEO and Co-founder, welcomes the funding as an important turning point for Priceza to develop into an international e-commerce tech company in its 7th year of operations.
"For Priceza, it's a significant milestone; recognition as a strong, international tech-based company. Being backed by a strategic, global investor like HBM, who shares our mission, enables us to leverage their digital expertize and in depth media understanding to deliver the best online shopping services to consumers across SEA."
"According to the Euromonitor, Bofa Merrill Lynch's eCommerce Report, e-commerce shopping accounts for a mere 1-2% of total retail sales in SEA, compared to 16% in Korea, 9% in US and 8% global average. With the growing e-commerce ecosystem in the region, having the support of HBM will firmly place Priceza as the number one online shopping search engine in this region and provide the fuel for rapid growth. "Both Priceza and HBM share a vision to make the retail ecosystem in SEA as transparent as possible to benefit both buyers and sellers," added Thanawat.
Priceza's Series B funding is in the seven-figure USD range and significantly higher than Series A funding in 2013. HBM has now taken over the initial stake from CyberAgent Ventures (CAV) giving them a 24.9% share in Priceza. Media conglomerate HBM is a big investor in consumer-facing internet businesses which account for some 60% of its annual revenues.
This investment, carried out by a recently formed unit within HBM called Burda Principal Investments (BPI), set up in 2015 to offer long-term growth equity for fast-growing digital technology and media companies, is the first of what will be many investments by the company into SEA.
"We are looking at increasing our investments in SEA and Priceza seemed a natural choice because of how it has grown from an idea from three Thai computer engineers in 2010 to a high-profile platform spanning 6 countries," pointed out Fredrich von Scanzoni, CEO at Burda Asia.
"This is in alignment of our strategy to invest in a great team and in a robust e-commerce ecosystem. We have been investing in e-commerce companies for the past 20 years and understand the price comparison space very well. With Priceza joining our portfolio, they will bring deep insights into the region and together we can build Priceza to be a significant player and market leader in SEA," said Friedrich.
Peter Kennedy, executive chairman of Burda Asia, echoes this support for Priceza.
"We have been impressed by the growth of Priceza within and beyond Thailand. The strategy behind the Series B investment is to enable Priceza to expand and develop even further and solidify their market dominance".