Indonesian marketplace Bukalapak acquires majority stake in MY's iPrice Group

Indonesian tech marketplace, Bukalapak, has acquired a majority stake in iPrice Group, a Malaysian price comparison platform.

Through this investment, iPrice now has the opportunity to accelerate its growth by leveraging the synergies between the two groups.

With the exponential growth of e-Commerce in Southeast Asia, Bupalapak’s decision to shift its focus from competing head-to-head with other marketplaces to acquiring niche ones does not come as a surprise.

In fact, iPrice's commitment to building a niche marketplace with a focus on price-conscious consumers has aided in it gaining loyalty among Southeast Asian shoppers.

Willix Halim, the CEO of Bukalapak, said that with Bukalapak’s extensive expertise in e-Commerce and iPrice’s loyal userbase and proprietary technology, he is confident that they can unlock the platform’s full potential.

“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," added co-founder of iPrice, Heinrich Wendel. 

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According to the press release, iPrice investors, including Itochu and Naver, have welcomed the deal.

“After iPrice had to scale back some of its more long-term bets last June, given bad financial market conditions, we knew that we would need a partner to unlock the true value of our assets,” said Heinrich Wendel, the co-founder of iPrice.

The press statement also highlighted that moving forward, iPrice will continue to operate as an independent entity, maintaining its neutral position toward users and working with a broad set of merchants and sellers.

This would mean that the price comparison platform will maintain a neutral position towards users, working with a broad set of merchants and sellers to provide its service.

In June last year, iPrice laid off 20% of its 250 employees in light of its core mission to "help people save money" shopping online. In the retrenchment process, iPrice will follow all contractual and legal requirements and is actively helping staff who have been let go find new opportunities. 

According to iPrice, it prides itself on solving the problem of overpaying when shopping online by comparing prices, promotions and seller discounts across its vast catalogue of offers collected from thousands of sellers and marketplaces. Over the years, iPrice has expanded the business from its website to offer a full-suite white-label marketplace solution for super apps, including BNPL providers.

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