First HungryGoWhere, then Chope: What's Grab cooking up with these acquisitions?

Last week, Grab Singapore made headlines when it was revealed that it had acquired popular Singapore restaurant reservation app Chope for an undisclosed sum.

“The vast majority of the merchants on our platform are small, medium-sized businesses who don’t have the same resources or know-how that big F&B brands have," said a Grab spokesperson when MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out. 

"Our focus is to help level the playing field for them through tools that empower them to grow and manage their businesses more efficiently. We believe the addition of Chope’s products and services provides more synergies for our merchant-partners, especially in helping them capture online-to-offline opportunities," the spokesperson added. 

The acquisition comes just two years after Grab Singapore relaunched HungryGoWhere and its accompanying social media channels a year after the food site shut down in 2021.

The revamped HungryGoWhere brand aimed to address the growing interest of diners to reconnect with the local food scene in much deeper ways. 

The new brand retains its name and iconic red hue, in a nod to its longstanding legacy as a trusted food discovery platform in the F&B scene. It also sported a trendy and approachable new look that reflected its commitment to engaging with consumers through content. 

To ensure its curation of content constantly addresses what consumers are looking for, HungryGoWhere is also currently leveraging insights derived from Grab’s super app data, such as popular food trends and frequently visited places in Singapore, among a spectrum of other interests and preferences.

Don't miss: Grab acquires Singapore restaurant reservation app Chope

With Grab holding a substantial portion of the food delivery and ride-hailing category locally already, the question is, what are its plans for the future of its services especially with Chope and HungryGoWhere now under its belt. 

Upgrading its first-party data

According to Nishant Kaushal, founder and CEO of ADNA Research, it could be because they are trying to own more part of the value chain as a super app. 

"A super app wants to be an app which leads the ecosystem and where everything you want is there," said Kaushal, adding that eating out is a big thing in Singapore and that Grab most likely wants to have a greater stake in the activity by potentially offering up more linked services. 

"For example, if someone makes a booking for a restaurant through Chope, Grab then has that information, and they can offer more interlinked serviced such as prompting them to get a Grab taxi to their restaurant and after the meal, pay using GXS bank's virtual card, thus adding value to their users," he said. 

He added that right now, Grab Delivery is only an online-to-online service but with the acquisitions, it can offer more offline opportunities and secure a new source of income. 

Kaushal said:

It also allows Grab to extract more data from its existing user base and build on its first-party data.

Adding to his point, Prantik Mazumdar, president of TiE Singapore, said that Grab is likely acquiring food platforms such as Chope and HungryGoWhere to increase its market share and penetration in a very crowded space in SEA that includes other players such as Quandoo, OpenTable, EatApp, Yelp, Resy, Oddle, Tock, Odette and Eatigo.

"Chope had an extensive network of restaurants across Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Phuket, Bali, Jakarta, Shanghai and Beijing and this is a good opportunity for Grab to consolidate its position in the market with cost-effective deals in a market with tight funding," he said. 

He added that with Grab's financial might and tech platform, it could pose a "serious threat" to the other restaurant booking platforms as their customers would have a lot more consolidated choices within their app environment.

Saying that, Mazumdar said that Grab’s ambition to be the region's superapp is "extremely ambitious" and difficult in a fragmented market such a s Southeast Asia where there is "no homogeneity" and where it would take a lot of domain expertise to attract and engage users to use their app for multi-domain functions.

He added that post acquisition, Grab will need to decide whether it will keep the Chope brand independent given its strong brand salience in the region and also the ease offered by its native integration with Google searches online. Alternatively, it needs to decide if it will completely integrate it within its app or keep both options available.

"As a customer, my desire would be to keep both options available for the foreseeable future to leverage Chope’s brand recognition and cater to different customer behaviours," he said. 

Mazumdar added that regardless, Grab will need to do a thorough deduplication of restaurants and customer first party data in their system across GrabFoods, HungryGoWhere and now Chope and get a realistic gauge of the scale of their combined restaurant and customer database.

Based on that, they would be in a position to renegotiate booking commission fees with restaurants to increase their revenue and margins, to justify the acquisition.

Potential challenges

Saying that, not many companies outside of China have cracked the code to creating a super app, according to Ranganathan Somanathan, co-founder of RSquared Global Ventures. 

"While Grab is building some solutions in-house, acquisitions such as Chope provides them an efficient path to expanding their service offering. The challenge however is not in the acquisition, but in the integration of these companies and their tech onto the Grab platform, giving a seamless and meaningful user experience," he said. 

He added that with these acquisitions, Grab can gain a significant share of food discovery and reservation market, giving them instant access to valuable data on dining habits, and restaurant information.

"When properly integrated, Grab will be able to enhance the customer value, not only on the demand side but for the supply side as well. This in turn will enable them to generate incremental revenue and potentially strengthen their financial health," he said. 

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