iPrice Soon Expands Business Coverage to Online Loans

Aggregator platform E-commerce from Malaysia, iPrice, managed to secure additional funding of $5 million or equivalent to 71,7 billion Rupiah from Itochu Corporation, a conglomerate from Japan and KDDI Open Innovation Fund III operated by Global Brain Corporation. This funding will be used to increase the company's role in helping buyers get the best deals as the market grows E-commerce in South East Asia.

Along with recently received funding, iPrice will also expand the scope of services to the loan market online by helping users discover more than just offers E-commerce best, but also the best digital loan for their purchase.

Google's report predicts that digital lending transactions will reach $92 billion by 2025 due to the current acceleration of development in Southeast Asia, and this price comparison platform will continue to innovate to meet consumer demand.

Armed with this vision, iPrice is very enthusiastic to welcome Itochu. Although better known as a trading company, Itochu has extensive experience in lending from its subsidiary, PT ITC Auto Multi Finance, which operates a lending business in Indonesia under the brand name my pay.

"We are very optimistic that we can maximize the digital lending experience of our investor, Itochu. The first step in our strategic partnership is to add Itochu's subsidiary, Payku, as the main lending partner in Indonesia. Experience in this field is very important because we have ambitions to increase expansion penetrate the lending market," said iPrice CEO Paul Brown-Kenyon.

Regarding the new partnership with Payku, iPrice will observe if users buy products at the lowest prices and still pay high loan rates. Simply put, users can be said to have not gotten the best deals. Therefore, with this collaboration, iPrice and Itochu will help increase the choice of digital loans for consumers in Southeast Asia.

Business focus and growth

A Facebook and Bain & Company report states that by 2021, the number of platforms used by SEA digital consumers will continue to increase to an average of 7,9 websites per user, nearly 52% more than in 2020. This trend indicates an increasing need for product catalogs. more curated. The goal is to help users and consumers save prices among the many marketplaces available.

With the mission of increasing transparency, convenience and trust in e-commerce markets across Southeast Asia to help shoppers save on prices, iPrice also launched a service PriceWatch in mid 2021. This feature allows users in Indonesia to receive price reduction notifications for the products they want directly on the iPrice application. This service will continue to be rolled out in Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand throughout 2022.

In interview with DailySocial.id team in 2021, Paul also revealed their long-term vision to be a companion E-commerce for the Southeast Asian region. Based on their plans at the time, iPrice had hopes of achieving profitability within the next 2-3 years.

"We've made a profit in 2018 and will be making a profit again in the future. However, for now, we will focus on continuing with big investments, such as helping users get the best loans, to strengthen our value proposition to our users and seize the opportunities offered by the SEA digital economy." answered an iPrice representative when it came to profitability.

To date, iPrice has served more than 125 million unique users across the Southeast Asia region through its platform. The company has compared and created a curated catalog of 7+ billion e-commerce offerings from over 8 million sellers. iPrice itself has partnered with several trusted institutions. Apart from Payku, iPrice's other loan partners include Home Credit (Indonesia), Julo (Indonesia), Cashalo (Philippines), Smartpay (Vietnam), and ZIP (Singapore, launched in H1 2022).