HungryGoWhere Malaysia offers a sneak peak into the company’s future.
Startup acquisitions are a mixed bag: sometimes the acquired product soars, other times it sinks due to neglect, shuffling of talent, or a misalignment of cultures, personalities, or goals.
HungryGoWhere, which SingTel acquired last year for $9.4 million, could certainly see its fortunes fade. The three co-founders have taken a more hands-off role at the site, leaving the day-to-day stuff to Matt Whittingham, CEO of inSing and HungryGoWhere.
Further, competition in the online food discovery space has intensified in the past two years, with Yelp, Burpple, 8 Days, and a cornucopia of other food directories battling for eyeballs among Singapore’s tiny 5.3 million population.
But Whittingham says that HungryGoWhere — and inSing for that matter — are here to stay. In fact, both are seeing growth across their properties.
HungryGoWhere is far from being neglected
| Where are the founders? |
|---|
| Dennis Goh is working within SingTel’s Group Digital Life division and is running its Australian Local Life operation, which includes Eatability, a food portal it acquired shortly after HungryGoWhere.
Wong Hoong An is the director of sales within STDM, and he continues to be responsible for developing advertising and marketing solutions for food and beverage merchants on HungryGoWhere. Tan Yung Yih has left HungryGoWhere to pursue an MBA. He retains an advisory and consultative role at STDM. |
Indeed, the numbers indicate that HungryGoWhere is a prized possession for SingTel Digital Media (STDM), the SingTel (SGX:Z74) subsidiary that runs both HungryGoWhere and inSing.
The food portal, covering Singapore and Malaysia, now has 7.1 million monthly pageviews in August, up from three million when it was acquired in May 2012. Since the acquisition, the site has been focusing a lot more on editorial content to boost traffic. It is able to do this by relying on STDM’s editorial team.
Comparing HungryGoWhere’s traffic with inSing, the company’s lifestyle portal with a respectable five million pageviews following a 20 percent year-on-year growth between August 2012 to August 2013, it’s clear that the food site now has the lion’s share of the viewership despite coming in from behind when it was bought.
Beyond the main website, the HungryGoWhere mobile app now has 600,000 downloads with 100,000 monthly active users across all platforms. Leveraging on SingTel’s phone business, the app comes preinstalled on all Samsung phones sold by the telco.
STDM has also been focusing on TableDB, HungryGoWhere’s instant restaurant reservation service, which has seen a 20 percent month-on-month growth in bookings from January to August this year. It has recruited a sales team and partnered with Reserveit.sg to combine its inventory of restaurants, which now exceeds 500 in Singapore.
The future of restaurant reservations
HungryGoWhere could be just a seed for a bigger plan
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
