With new fund iPrice will help users find best loan offers
KUALA LUMPUR, 23 MARCH 2022 – iPrice Group, Southeast Asia’s leading price comparison platform helping online shoppers save money, announced today that it has raised $5 million of additional funding.
The capital was raised from Japan-based firms Itochu Corporation and the KDDI Open Innovation Fund III (operated by Global Brain Corporation).
The additional funding will bolster iPrice’s role in finding shoppers the best deals as Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market becomes increasingly difficult to navigate.
With the new funding, iPrice will also expand its services to the lending market. It intends to help users find not only the best e-commerce offering but also the best consumer loans to fund their purchases.
This is because there is the need for a curated catalogue to provide transparency across platforms and help users save money among multiple marketplaces.
iPrice addresses this need by aggregating the best offers from more than 7 billion products and 8 million sellers on a single platform. In 2021, more than 125 million unique users across the region used iPrice platform.
iPrice Price Watch
“Besides comparing products, prices, sellers’ reputations, and delivery conditions, we are continually deepening our expertise to help shoppers in various ways – be it aggregating seller vouchers, creating an app that alerts users of their desired products’ price drops, or finding the cheapest loans to fund their purchases,” said iPrice Group CEO Paul Brown-Kenyon.
As the newest addition, iPrice recently launched a Price Watch service allowing users in Indonesia to receive alerts of their desired products’ price drops directly at iPrice App. The service will continue to roll out in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand throughout 2022.
iPrice welcomes Itochu as part of the capitalization table. Although known for its trading operations, Itochu has vast experience in the area of lending and Itochu‘s subsidiary, PT ITC Auto Multi Finance, operates a lending business in Indonesia under the brand Payku.
“We’re very excited that we can leverage our investors’ extensive lending experience. The first step in our strategic cooperation will be adding Itochu’s subsidiary, Payku, as a key lending partner in Indonesia. Their expertise will be vital as we further penetrate the lending market,” added Brown-Kenyon.
Aside from Payku, iPrice’s other lending partners include Home Credit (Indonesia), Julo (Indonesia), Cashalo (Philippines), Smartpay (Vietnam), and ZIP (Singapore, launching in H1 2022).