Singapore — Southeast Asian data-driven loyalty platform Society Pass Incorporated, otherwise known as SoPa, announced its acquisition of Pushkart.ph, an online grocery delivery service in the Philippines as part of its expansion into the market.
Through the buyout, Pushkart.ph has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoPa and will leverage the platform’s capital to increase on-demand grocery shopping services to more consumers and more retailers initially to Metro Manila and then to all of the Philippines, while empowering grocery stores and restaurants to transform business models and further tap into online markets.
The announcement comes at a time of accelerated rapid growth for delivery services in the Philippines, with the internet economy expected to increase 24% from US$17b in 2021 to US$40b in 2025. Pushkart.ph is one of the Philippines’ growing e-commerce platforms, with a customer base of over 125,000 registered users, over 35,000 social media followers, and more than 20,000 mobile app downloads.
Dennis Nguyen, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Society Pass, said that they are excited to combine the robust technology, retail and operational prowess of a high-performance brand like Pushkart.ph with SoPa’s brand-building experience.
“As the Philippine consumer faces tremendous challenges with traditional brick and mortar shopping due to a plethora of hurdles including excessive wait times in traffic/ public transport, SoPa aims to provide viable solutions by providing impetus to the growing e-commerce industry in the country. Given the immense potential of the Philippines market, we are very excited about the opportunities that this acquisition will bring in the upcoming months. In addition, as the Philippines is a cornerstone of SoPa’s VIP (Vietnam, Indonesia, and Philippines) acquisition strategy, I expect to acquire a number of market-leading companies in the Philippines over the next few months,” Nguyen said.
Michael Lim, CEO of Pushkart.ph, commented, “We are very excited to announce our acquisition by Society Pass; this partnership provides us with the opportunity to not only grow our presence in the Philippines but further our lead in the grocery delivery business. We are excited to join the larger SoPa ecosystem which will enable us to harness its integrated marketing and technology proposition while also strengthening our collective senior management resources. We foresee that this will lead to immediate returns in terms of cost optimization and increased revenue generation. With the capital provided by SoPa, Pushkart.ph will now be empowered to provide enhanced end to end solutions to our customers and ensure an amplified market presence.
The data-driven loyalty platform said that they are leveraging technology to provide a more personalised experience for customers in the purchase journey, to help transform the entire retail value chain in SEA. Through the acquisition of growing companies and partnership with visionary entrepreneurs in five distinct verticals: loyalty, lifestyle, travel, food & beverage and merchant software, SoPa expects to meet the region’s growing demand for better and more convenient services.
The acquisition is in line with SoPa’s core vertical focus and facilitates the proliferation of its growth in the Philippines while increasing consumer opportunities and delivering enhanced value. This move will also help tap the increasing digital penetration in the online grocery shopping space in the Philippines market.
In a press release, the SoPa disclosed that the offering of this acquisition is of immense consequence to the end-user with SoPa’s aggressive new plans for Pushkart.ph which include adding more hubs in key cities and regions and increasing its manpower. SoPa aims to expand Pushkart.ph’s technology offering, phenomenally increasing registered users to more than double to over 300,000 and driving app downloads to over 150,000 in 2022. Philippine consumers will be able to use Pushkart.ph app across 19 cities in Metro Manila with a guaranteed next day delivery service.
