Priceza – Never stop learning and improving
Priceza Thailand began in 2010, when three computer engineers from Chulalongkorn University – Thanawat Malabupapha, Vachara Nievaphan, and Virot Suphadun – came together to launch the company. In 2011, Priceza already had a combined total of over 1 million monthly users, and was able to grow rapidly, increasing its user base by over 100% over the following year.
With such strong growth, Priceza was an attractive proposition to investors interested in forming a joint venture. In the end, however, Priceza, decided to launch a joint venture with CyberAgent Ventures in 2013. This created an opportunity for Priceza to expand into new regional markets, with a focus on being the number one shopping search engine and price comparison site in Southeast Asia.
Every year, Priceza developed its resilience and increased its market strength. In 2014, it developed a platform that was compatible with every type of OS and device in preparation for entering a new market in Indonesia. The new platform was deployed effectively, and in 2015, Priceza continued its overseas expansion by entering another four countries, namely Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, bringing its number of total monthly users to over 9 million. Later, in 2016, Priceza raised a significant amount of series B funding from Hubert Burda Media, and this allowed the business to step up and really push on towards becoming the number one shopping search engine in ASEAN.
At present, Priceza is active in six countries: Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. It has more than 14 million monthly users and a database of over 100 million products across all of its territories.
An e-commerce opening is a Priceza opportunity
The e-commerce trend that we see in the media every day has raised the question of whether e-commerce is already a red ocean market. But Priceza has a different perspective: it believes that although e-commerce is an attractive market for all, each individual e-marketplace is locked into a fierce battle with its competitors. Since building an e-marketplace is a long-term investment, it needs to have a huge budget behind it. This is the financial state of play in e-commerce and, in practice, it means whoever has the longest piece of string is most likely to succeed. In contrast, however, if a company’s budget is too small, it will struggle to stay the pace with the competition.
On the other hand, the e-commerce market has many angles and niches within it, and this is where Priceza steps in and offers its brand of marketing solutions. As such, if an e-commerce market has many players and high competition, then it means all the more opportunity for Priceza.
Scaling up – The Priceza way
Scaling up, or expanding, can take place after a startup has found a product-market fit in its first market. The startup can then introduce that same product into overseas markets, as Priceza did after a period of operating only in Thailand.
A startup can also start scaling up by increasing the variety of services it offers, and by splitting its product lines, as Priceza did when it launched Priceza Money in 2017.
Obstacles to overcome
During Priceza’s previous market scaling, its main challenge was its search for a Product-Market Fit when it did not know for sure what its customers really wanted, or how to develop a product to meet their particular needs. Priceza spent a long time with real users to understand their demands, whether through interviews, surveys or letting the users test the product[s] themselves. This is something Priceza does continuously, to develop products that fulfill the ever-changing demands of its users.
Never stop scaling new markets
This year, Priceza focused on mounting a full-scale advance into overseas markets, particularly Indonesia. With the formation of a Full Local Team, it hopes to be the number one shopping search engine within three years, and it dreams of helping consumers decide how and where they can get the best value products online. Indonesia’s e-commerce market is fiercely competitive, and its total market value is thought to be around $46 billion. But, as a shopping search engine, Priceza helps consumers to navigate that competition seamlessly and effectively.
What’s more, Priceza continues to diversify the types of service it delivers. It is now expanding its services into commerce + fintech, a process which has been ongoing since 2017. Priceza Money, for example, is a financial product and insurance comparison service, and it has now launched across three product lines: car insurance comparison, credit card comparison and personal loan comparison. This last product was launched in March 2018, as Priceza saw the possibility of doing business in Thailand’s personal loan market. This market is valued at $358bn baht, but no single player has yet come to dominate it.
Advice from the old to the young
A startup does not need to grow only from its domestic market – and this is even truer for online businesses, where customers can be found in any corner of the world that has internet access. The most important point is that the products and services need to solve real problems, and the startup must strive to be number one at what it does, with a focus on how its products can satisfy the needs of customers.
When we enter other overseas markets, we must understand the different challenges in each one, and we must of course apply different strategies in each country. A startup should learn as much as it can and prepare itself before expanding into any new market and, importantly, it must focus on sales, as this is what drive the business and what makes it sustainable.
A member of AIS The StartUp, Priceza was selected in 2018 to join the Private Mentoring Session with administrators and Innov8 investors, i.e. the investment partners at AIS The StartUp. For any entrepreneurs who want to take the fight to their competitors and build an aggressive scaling plan in Thailand with AIS – the country’s largest telco, startups can apply to join and submit their pitches at AIS The StartUp through www.ais.th/thestartup.
