Thai E-commerce Startup Priceza Leading Price Comparison In Indonesia

Founded in 2010, e-commerce startup Priceza was formed to help buyers compare prices and deals from different retailers. It was during the early stages of e-commerce in 2009, when the founders, then university students, realized the huge and diverse opportunities in this sector. With no access to venture capital in Thailand, they decided to bootstrap their business venture. It was not until late 2013, when Priceza was able to attract seed funding from Japan’s CyberAgent Ventures. As of March 2016, the company is the leading price comparison tool in Thailand and Indonesia with over 7 million visits per month and growing.

Unlike its competitors, Priceza´s business model does not participate in the transaction. Instead, Priceza directs you to the retailer’s website for the purchase. Revenues are generated from three sources: product listings, display advertisement (such as banners, email marketing and social posts) and advertorials (such as PR news, promotions and reviews). Only a small percentage of online visits to a retailer’s site get converted to purchases the first time and price comparison tools do a decent job in aiding consumers in the buying decision.

Priceza uses a performance marketing approach meaning merchants pay on a performance basis and to attract merchants, Priceza offers free listings for a trial period. The merchants often experience growth in their traffic during this period and are confident to establish a business relationship with Priceza. Moreover, Priceza has adapted to the rapid shift from desktops to mobiles as the operating device of choice, and has built more optimized mobile-dedicated sites to keep up with growth and provide a better user experience.

A look at some of the competitors in Southeast Asia region by visits (March 2016 SimilarWeb):

• Thailand

Priceza remains the main player in Thailand’s price comparison market with 4.5m per month, with PricePrice coming in second with 1.9m, followed by ipricethailand with 161k. Priceza maintains around a 60% market share.

• Indonesia

Priceza holds the top spot with Boneprice and PricePrice following close behind. Indonesia’s first entrants, PriceArea and Telunjuk have fallen lower. This is indeed a very competitive online comparison marketplace and it is important for Priceza to maintain its marketing efforts here to maintain its top spot.

• Philippines

PricePrice dominates the market in the Philippines with 3m visits. PricePony following behind with 2.6m visit , PriceMe 254k, Priceza 163k and PricePanda 102k. This market is still very young and beginning to develop a startup econsystem.

• Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam

Price comparison sites have not taken off in Singapore probably to due the small market size and limited number of retailers. Players in Singapore are Priceza, PricePanda and PriceMe but the traffic numbers are very low. In Malaysia, visits are similarily low except for Technave with 932k. Priceza, PricePanda and PriceMe are also here. In Vietnam, the only real price comparison site is Websosanh with 4m visits. This looks like a good market to enter with favorable support from government and a fast growing consumer base.

Priceza believes they have a competitive edge, as they are completely focused on their operations in the Southeast Asian countries and do not plan to extend their functionalities beyond price comparison. The founders believe that the merchants will be more willing to share performance statistics because of Priceza´s actionable intelligence. Priceza can help merchants offer better promotions with better results in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Mr. Thanawat (Wai) Malabuppha is the CEO of Priceza. His educational background is a combination of computer engineering and marketing. Wai´s longtime passion for e-commerce and Internet motivated him to co-found Priceza. He started Priceza with his friends from the School of Engineering at Chulalongkorn University, Wirod Supadul is the CTO and Vachara Nivataphand is the CPO. The three of them have strong technical backgrounds with MBAs.

CEO, Thanawat (Wai) Malabuppha answers a few questions about Priceza´s vision:

What inspired you to start Priceza?

In year 2009, it was in the beginning period of E-Commerce in Thailand. More and more online stores opened and most of them aggregated in the e-market places like TARAD.com and WeloveShopping.com. Some opened their own website e.g. tohome.com. I sensed the growth potential of Ecommerce market in Thailand and expected that the more online merchants opened, the more consumers need much time to select from several stores that sell the same product. Hence, I and my co-founders aim to establish Thailand’s one-stop shopping portal that consumers can shop from every online merchants and compare products and prices easily.

Please share what is your current vision for Priceza?

Our vision is to empower consumers to make smarter shopping decision anywhere anytime. We are building an ecosystem where consumers are empowered by information and stand on equal ground with the sellers. We are building a Win-Win Ecosystem for buyers and sellers where Priceza provides a ‘guarantee’ that verifies if the deals on offer from various retailers are as good as they seem to be. On the other hand, we are committed to boost-up sales for Ecommerce merchants/retailers by using performance-based marketing.

Who are your competitors and what strategy are you using to disrupt their market?

There is no prominent direct competitors in Thailand but there are a few local players in Indonesia. Our differentiation is that Priceza is the only one player with SE Asia focus with prominent operation in 6 countries. Our system covers over 25M product items and with the very robust updating system to make sure that Priceza show up-to-date information to users.

How do you plan to scale the business? What countries?

We will focus on the 6 countries in SE Asia over the next couple of years as this is huge enough already, 600M population.

How is Priceza monetizing the business model?

Priceza is sending high buying-intent traffic to Online retailers and we charge them from those traffic. It’s basically an advertising model.

Can you share with us any growth projections? Revenue? Users?

In 2015, Priceza saw over 70M visits in all sites and it’s around 100% growth from 2014.

Are you looking to raise any funds?

Yes, we are in discussion with a couple of investors.

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A laser focus on price comparison, Priceza wants to become the preferred marketplace for all online merchants across the region. E-commerce is still ripe for investment with online sales representing about 3% for the entire region. The company is in the process of raising a series A to expand and develop operations throughout Southeast Asia.

A major announcement was made by the Thai government to promote Thai startups by launching a $570 million venture capital fund. The fund will invent in 2500 startups with goal of increasing the number of startups to 10,000 over the next few years. This ambitious plan makes it an exciting time to be an entrepreneur in Thailand.