Let the Online Price Comparison Battle in Southeast Asia Begin

The price comparison site battle in Southeast Asia is heating up. OK, maybe the battle isn’t in full swing yet. But the online price comparison space is definitely getting a little crowded in Southeast Asia.

You may ask, “What’s an online price comparison site?” It’s basically a site that compares product prices across different e-commerce sites. The prices listed from various e-commerce sites are taken by crawling or through using XML feeds or APIs. The end result is that users can see which site offers the best price for a particular item.

Even though most of the online price comparison sites are operating locally, the big boys like Japanese Kakaku’s PricePrice and Rocket Internet’s PricePanda are covering pretty much all of the region’s key countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Other local players include Priceza (Thailand), Telunjuk, and PriceArea (Indonesia) (1).

What do local price comparison sites think?

With Kakaku and Rocket Internet getting into this space, Redya Febriyanto, founder at Telunjuk, a price comparison startup based in Indonesia, appears to be happy. He believes that with more players coming in, it’s a good sign that Telunjuk is in the right direction.

Telunjuk is currently enjoying a 20 to 30 percent growth rate but declined to share its user numbers in absolute figures. We’ve heard rumors that Telunjuk is in the process of receiving a round of funding; Febriyanto confirms that talks are ongoing but did not give any other details.

While Telunjuk can be used as a price comparison site, Febriyanto doesn’t really see it as one. He told me:

We see Telunjuk as a collection of shopping tools. We are here to help people find things to buy and it isn’t necessarily based on price. Therefore Telunjuk’s tagline is: “Sahabat kita saat belanja” which translates to “Our best friend in shopping.”

PriceArea, Telunjuk’s homeground competitor, doesn’t just really see price comparison sites like Kakaku or Rocket Internet as competitors either. Rather, Andry Suhaili, founder of PriceArea, has concerns about sites like Blibli and Tokopedia, both of which are local Indonesian e-commerce players. He explains that both sites have connections with merchants and also have comparison features and might possibly “have PriceArea’s model anytime they want.”

Currently, PriceArea gets around 60,000 daily visits and has 50,000 registered users. Suhaili told me, “In the end, whoever has the largest number of users will win the game.”

Moving north to Thailand, Priceza’s founder Thanawat Malabuppha has the same thoughts as Telunjuk. He sees the entry of Kakaku and Rocket Internet as a sign that Thailand’s e-commerce market is ready. Plus Malabuppha believes the presence of Kakaku’s PricePrice and Rocket Internet’s PricePanda will help to drive e-commerce mainstream. He added: