Bukalapak-backed ecommerce firm iPrice expands to Australia

(From left) iPrice Group CEO Paul Brown-Kenyon and co-founders David Chmelař and Heinrich Wendel / Photo credit: iPrice Group

Malaysia-based shopping aggregator iPrice Group has launched iPrice.au, its price comparison platform in Australia.

This marks its first “significant expansion” beyond Southeast Asia, the company said in a statement. Outside Malaysia and Australia, iPrice also operates in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong.

“As inflationary pressure make shoppers more cautious about spending, we are pleased to provide the convenience of Southeast Asia’s largest price comparison platform to Australia,” said Karl Loo, senior vice president in business development and internationalization at iPrice.

The company said its platform has a “large teams of category experts” to review the catalog and intervene where “offers might be too good to be true.”

In April, iPrice was acquired by Bukalapak. The deal was part of the Indonesian ecommerce firm’s strategy to focus on niche marketplaces.

Following the acquisition, iPrice continues to operate independently. It said that it has over 125 million unique users across all the markets it operates in.

The Malaysian company scaled back its operations in June 2022, when it had to lay off 20% of its workforce at the time due to the economic downturn.

See also: Bukalapak seizes ‘great opportunity’ in Mitra as rivals like GoTo exit