Dealised’s CEO Talks About His Plans in Asia

Dealised, the group buying solution service platform, last week received a US$5.3 million funding round led by SingTel Innov8. With the new investment fund what does Dealised have in mind? We spoke to CEO Jonathan Marchbank last week to find out more.

Before we even started talking about Dealised’s plans in Asia, the confident-looking CEO, Jonathan Marchbank, shared a little bit more about service. One thing to keep in mind is that Dealised isn’t a group buying site. Rather, it offers group-buy technology and solutions for large corporations which hope to offer daily deals, or at the very least open a new revenue stream through e-commerce.

Dealised’s clients include The Daily Telegraph in the UK, Mecom from Scandinavia, and Spreets from Australia which was acquired by Yahoo! for US$42.9 million in 2009. The technology solution it offers includes mobile (both feature and smartphone), electronic direct mailer (eDM), web, and analytics.

Friends with Groupon and Livingsocial

Dealised is in no way a competitor of group-buying sites like Groupon and Livingsocial. Marchbank explains that Groupon and Livingsocial are disrupting technologies which have caused large corporations to rethink their strategy. For example, merchants would rather put up a deal on group-buy sites than advertise in a newspaper, shrinking the ad revenue pie within the traditional media industry.

Marchbank also feels that big players like Groupon and Livingsocial are important because they educate the market, which in turn helps large corporations to understand the group-buy industry better.

Mobile, Southeast Asia, and India

Dealised has team members based in Europe, India, Singapore, and Australia. Mobile is something that it will be focusing heavily on.

“We believe that mobile is rising fast in Asia, and mobile commerce will be part of the growth too. Everyone will want to ride on the wave,” says Marchbank. He specifically pointed out Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India as Dealised’s primary markets.

There are multiple ways for Dealised to work with various partners. For example, a supermarket could leverage on its customer base to share relevant deals from an external group-buy site, and as such earn a cut from each deal sold. Alternatively, the supermarket could also employ Dealised’s technology to sell its own products through eDM or SMS.

For Dealised, working with telcos is also a crucial part of its key strategy. Its lead investor, SingTel, is the largest telco in Singapore with a wide network and presence in India, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In Singapore alone, SingTel has over three million customers which constitutes about 60 percent of the entire population.

“SingTel has wide reach in Singapore. It could offer deal services to its huge client base,” said Marchbank.

However, Marchbank explains that Dealised is also open to work with other telecoms groups. “We will leverage on Singtel’s network and expertise but we are also open to working with others if the opportunities arise. We don’t have any exclusive clause with SingTel.”

China and Japan have to wait