- Price comparison platform iPrice Group have announced their success in acquiring funding from South Korean tech giant Naver.
- They plan to utilise the funding to continue its focus on expanding in the Indonesia market.
Just today, e-commerce price discovery platform iPrice Group announced their success in acquiring funding from leading South Korean search portal Naver Corp. This news comes just three months after iPrice successfully closed a Series B round led by LINE Ventures—themselves a subsidiary of Naver.
“Naver doesn’t only operate the leading search engine in South Korea but has been also able to build an impressive shopping and price comparison engine in its domestic market,” said iPrice Group CEO David Chmelar. “Given the wealth of experience and strategic value that Naver brings to the table, we couldn’t pass on the opportunity to welcome them as our latest investor.”
“We are honoured to receive the vote of confidence of such an iconic company in our path to become the primary gateway to online shopping in Southeast Asia.”
Including their previous rounds, it is estimated that they’ve raised at least US$10 million since their launch in October 2014.
This latest round of funding is complementary of iPrice’s steady growth within the Southeast Asia region, with over 500 million SKUs across seven countries now included within the group’s product catalogue.
Dictionary Time: A stock keeping unit (SKU) is a identification code for a store or product or service, usually displayed as a machine-readable bar code that helps track the item for inventory.
Additionally, they’ve also already managed to secure strategic partnerships with numerous B2B partners including Mediacorp in Singapore, Thairath in Thailand, and Samsung in Indonesia.
Back in May, iPrice also mentioned that they were on track to attain more than 150 million visitors in 2018. In the past 3 months, the group claims to have increased the number of monthly users by a further 50%—largely thanks to its accelerated growth in the Indonesia market, which is currently is the focal point of their growth strategy ahead of strengthening their other product verticals.
“As per our last funding announcement, we’re doubling down our investments in the Indonesian market and will keep on improving the user experience—especially in our two core verticals of fashion and electronics,” said Matteo Sutto, Chief Marketing Officer at iPrice Group.
The Price Is Right
All this follows iPrice’s strategy to reorganise its business into three distinct units (electronics, fashion, and commercial content), and so far this has worked in gaining the trust and favour of external investors.
“The tremendous traction which iPrice has continued to display throughout their latest fundraising is a testament to the impressive execution of the team and the explosive growth of Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market,” said Naver’s Peter Na.
This sentiment was backed up by Matteo Sutto, Chief Marketing Officer at iPrice Group.
“We’ve always focused on providing the best possible product experience for our users—a more comprehensive catalogue, more precise pricing info, a more intuitive and faster interface in addition to providing the highest quality of traffic to our e-commerce partners,” he said. “This translated over the years in both very fast top line growth, as well as superior monetisation capabilities versus our competitors.”
“The incredible growth of the e-commerce market in SEA and the success of comparable companies in other e-commerce markets outside Southeast Asia, played also an important factor in winning the confidence of our investors.”
Finally, Matteo also added that iPrice would also continue to remain relevant in the market particularly because of the increasing number of options available to online shoppers over recent times.
“The more the e-commerce market is evolving, and the more choices are given to consumers, the more the need for a platform such as iPrice,” he said.
“This can help them aggregate all e-commerce offers in a unique platform and help consumers make an informed choice—helping them save both money and time.”
- You can read about e-commerce trends on the iPrice website here.
Feature Image Credit: iPrice Group