Chope acquires restaurant booking app MakanLuar to enter Indonesia

Photo credit: Herry Lawford.

Singapore-headquartered restaurant reservation startup Chope has acquired Indonesian counterpart MakanLuar, the company announced today. The value of the deal is undisclosed. The acquisition was made with a mix of cash and shares, although Chope co-founder and CEO Arrif Ziaudeen does not reveal the percentage of each.

Through the deal, Chope adds Jakarta, Bandung, and Bali to its portfolio, bringing the cities it’s active in to eight. It’s been operating in Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing.

The MakanLuar founders will stay at the company’s helm.

Chope expanded in those territories organically, and every time it found it had to educate early adopters and find a product-market fit, Arrif says. “Jumping in at the stage MakanLuar is at, they’ve already crossed that threshold and are now in a position to hit the accelerator on sales and marketing, so we save valuable time,” he enthuses.

MakanLuar’s founding team of Kunal Narang and Hiro Mohinani was also a major factor for Chope. “We were inspired by Kunal and Hiro’s drive, and with a proven track record we really feel confident in these safe pairs of hands,” Arrif explains.

“Oddly enough, before we started MakanLuar, we spoke to Chope to seek ways to work together but we were too new at the time,” Kunal tells Tech in Asia. Once the team had some good traction in Indonesia, it made sense to get back in touch with Chope and become part of a bigger regional play, he adds.

Kunal and Hiro will stay at the company’s helm under the new regime, and the MakanLuar name will be retained for the moment. “Given the additional resources, expertise, and reach we’ll be getting with our integration, our team in Indonesia is on the way to getting significantly bigger,” Kunal explains. In about 6 to 12 months, the name will be “subtly folded” into the Chope brand, “in a way that respects the loyalty and brand equity the guys have built in Indonesia,” Arrif says.

MakanLuar was launched in 2013 in Jakarta. It became available in Bandung and Bali in late 2014 to early 2015. It sat nearly 100,000 diners in 2015, the company says. Competing service like Qraved is more widely used in Indonesia, but MakanLuar’s point of differentiation is in offering strictly quality establishments, according to the startup.

“MakanLuar already had impressive traction, and we saw obvious opportunities to further increase their aggression with our technology, marketing, and support,” Arrif says. Examples of that include Chope’s mobile apps and the queue monitoring system Chope adapted to its system when it acquired startup Appic Technologies in November 2014.

Chope raised US$8 million in June 2015, in a series C round co-led by NSI Ventures and F&H Fund Management, a fund chaired by pioneering Alibaba CTO John Wu. Since then, it’s doubled its monthly users and revenue (Arrif doesn’t get more specific than that) and now has 1,300 restaurant clients, not including MakanLuar’s clients.

The Singaporean startup continues to grow in a tough market, which a lot of competitors are trying to take a bite out of. These include Singapore’s HungryGoWhere, Malaysia’s Offpeak, and Thailand’s Eatigo. HungryGoWhere operates in Malaysia as well, while Offpeak and Eatigo are also active in Singapore.