Priceza Strengthens Its E-Commerce Platform In Southeast Asia With Burda Principal Investments, The Venture Arm Of Hubert Burda Media

Bangkok, September 28th 2016 – 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”.

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About Priceza

Priceza is the leading shopping search engine and price comparison shopping platform in SEA, operating in 6 countries (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam) with over 13 million monthly visitors. The Thailand-based website was co-founded in 2010 by three computer engineers, Thanawat Malabuppha, Vachara Nivataphand and Wirod Supadul. Priceza is currently the number one website in Thailand for price comparison with over 7.5 million active users each month visiting the website and a mobile app to hunt for competitive prices. Priceza is changing the landscape of online shopping, helping hundreds of merchants increase traffic and revenue by redirecting quality traffic to their websites.

About Hubert Burda Media

Hubert Burda Media, headquartered in Munich, is an international technology and media company with over 540 brands and products that are oriented to the needs of consumers. Burda has 175 million users and approximately 60 million paying consumers. Its commercial success is driven by over 10,000 employees around the world. Burda is active in 19 markets, above all in Germany – where it is one of the countries’ largest media groups – in Europe, the United States and Asia. Innovation is the driving force behind the organization, which builds on its original roots and values as a family-owned company.

Burda has been a pioneer in adopting digital technology and is a trusted partner for the long-term success of digital business. Examples include etsy.com (invested since 2006) or Xing (invested since 2009). With DLD (Digital, Life, Design) Hubert Burda Media has established a global network on innovation, digitization, science and culture with conferences around the world. Burda Principal Investments is the company’s unit to provide growth capital to digital ventures in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Thanawat Malabuppha
CEO & Co-Founder

Priceza Co., Ltd.

Thanawat is an internet entrepreneur with over 10 year experience in online business & e-commerce. He is one of the three co-founders of Priceza, the leading shopping search engine and price comparison shopping platform in Southeast Asia, operating in 6 countries with over 13 million monthly visitors. Thanawat is a committee member at the Thai Ecommerce Association and is often invited as a guest speaker in Thailand and in the SE Asian region to speak on how businesses can leverage on e-commerce for growth and success. His specialization is on price comparison shopping, online shopping media, e-commerce marketing, tech startup and fundraising.

Thanawat holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Chulalongkorn University and a master’s degree in Marketing from Thammasat University. He was also an exchange student at Stanford University, USA.

Friedrich von Scanzoni

CEO, Burda Asia

Friedrich is a recognized digital expert with broad management experience in M&A & venture capital, start-up, growth and restructuring environments. 
His specializes in building organizations and high performance teams, internationalization, digital product development, SEO, SEM as well as M&A and online travel.

Friedrich has been with Hubert Burda Media for the past ten years and has held different roles. Prior to that he was the Managing Director International at Holidaycheck AG, Germany’s largest Online Travel Agent and hotel review platform. He has also held senior management positions at various leading internet and media companies including Tomorrow Focus AG, Lycos Europe GmbH and Bertelsmann AG.

Peter Kennedy

Executive Chairman, Burda Asia

Peter Kennedy joined Burda Asia in 1998 and was tasked with developing the company’s various businesses in Asia. He developed and oversaw joint ventures in Taiwan with SPH, Indonesia with the Alisjahbana family, South Korea with Design House Inc. He was also closely involved in the set-up of a print joint venture with the Hindustan Times Group in Delhi and helped to acquire one of the region’s most successful luxury publishing companies, Prestige. In the digital space, he has worked on the company’s investment into contextual advertising in South Korea and most recently in the investment into Vietnam’s leading browser based search business, CocCoc. Prior to joining Burda, Peter worked in New York for the Economist, where he developed the magazine’s US market penetration strategy, now its largest market, and for Scientific American. He has extensive Asian business experience in Japan, South, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. He is an advisor/mentor to two VCs, 50Folds in the UK and DMP in Singapore. He received his BA in business studies from the City of London University and served in the Special Air Service (SAS) while in the UK military.