Tag: Acquisition

Bangkok, Thailand – European colocation services provider ETIX Everywhere has acquired a 67% interest in Genesis Data Centre, which operates in Bang Chalong 30kms from Bangkok’s historical centre. Genesis Data Centre will form the basis of a new data centre campus which will be jointly developed with its local partner telco Interlink Telecom.

The Genesis Data Centre, which was renamed ETIX Bangkok #1, is already live with 2.4 MW of IT power and the future development of the campus will offer significant additional capacity. The new data centre campus to be developed is said to offer a high level of redundancy with four diverse routes for fibre access and power supply coming from two distinct substations.

ETIX Everywhere said that with Thailand’s large population and strong internet penetration, the country is an important growth market for the public cloud and OTT service providers, and that they need to bring their data as close as possible to the end-users in order to deliver a better service that will drive demand for colocation services.

Louis Blanchot, ETIX Everywhere’s group CEO, commented, “We are very excited to announce our expansion into Asia starting with this acquisition in Bangkok, one of the most dynamic markets in the zone. This first step in Asia is a major milestone in ETIX’s strategy to support our global customers providing them with our best-in-class colocation services wherever they need.”

Meanwhile, Nuttanai Anuntarumporn, Interlink Telecom’s CEO, commented, “We are very pleased to have a strong partner like ETIX Everywhere with experience in this industry. We believe that our partnership will support the booming Southeast Asia data centre and cloud industry and lead us to common success.”

Pierre Patris, ETIX Everywhere’s CEO for Asia, shared that they have very strict colocation requirements, and it has been difficult for them to find a data centre that can match their standards in Thailand with enough capacity for expansion, and they finally found an answer to their needs.

“ETIX Everywhere has big ambitions in Southeast Asia, first with this campus in Bangkok, and we are also very active in data centre opportunities in Vietnam and the Philippines,” said Patris.

Singapore – E-commerce aggregator Una Brands has acquired Singapore’s furniture brands, EverDesk+ and ErgoTune, in a deal worth over eight-figures. This transaction deems to be one of the largest acquisitions of Singapore-based direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. 

EverDesk+ and ErgoTune have become household names after growing exponentially against the backdrop of the work-from-home requirements during the pandemic, and the subsequent shift to hybrid working arrangements fuelling and sustaining demand for ergonomic furniture.

The acquisition aims to aid EverDesk+ and ErgoTune’s expansion into new regional and international markets and to help achieve the goal of becoming the leading global players in the quality ergonomic furniture market. In addition, Una Brands’ growth strategy will see the brands launch onto additional e-commerce platforms in the coming months, including Amazon in the first half of 2022, as well as further their online-to-offline (O2O) offering with a showroom in Sydney from April, where customers can experience both brands’ products.

Together, the companies will work in partnership to lead the businesses through this period of growth and into their next evolution, with the brands benefiting from Una Brands’ global presence and the expertise of its team who hail from the likes of Irvins, Lazada, and Zalora. 

Yi Hao Lye, the co-founder of ErgoTune and EverDesk+, shared that the brands’ success has already far exceeded their expectations, but when the opportunity to work with Una Brands came along, they realised that a partnership with them would only further the growth plans they have. 

“With Una Brands’ financial backing and operational expertise, we are poised to grow our brands in various regional marketplaces and enter new markets at an accelerated timeline. Most importantly, Una Brands will accelerate our mission of helping people create a workspace where they feel great and can achieve great things. We are very excited to have Una Brands support the next phase of our expansion story,” said Lye.

Meanwhile, Kiren Tanna, Una Brands’ co-founder and CEO, stated that they are looking forward to capitalising on ErgoTune’s and EverDesk+’s strong momentum over recent years, and turbo-charging the brands’ growth with Una Brands’ in-house e-commerce expertise. 

“We aspire to grow ErgoTune and EverDesk+ into the region’s best-selling ergonomic chairs and desks in the next three years,” said Tanna.

Singapore — Redhill, a full-service global communications agency headquartered in Singapore, announced the acquisition of Hong Kong-based marketing and PR firm Creative Consulting Group (CCG). This marks the first acquisition for Redhill and is part of the firm’s efforts to scale globally and regionally.

The agency aims to strengthen its presence and service offering in Asia, and for the newly-acquired CCG, now part of the Redhill family, to continue to deliver serving clients in Hong Kong and the Greater China region.

CCG was founded in 2001 and has been delivering communication solutions to various business sectors, namely banking, finance, lifestyle, real estate and professional services, among others. The firm has handled top-value clients like JP Morgan, Cushman and Wakefield, and Bank of Singapore in their portfolio.

Belinda Chan, founder and managing partner at CCG, said, “We are thrilled to join the fast-growing, award-winning and highly-motivated Redhill family and are looking forward to incorporating a wider spectrum of clients with our diversified expertise. We have been in Hong Kong for 20 years and the team is ready to embark on a fuller professional journey and a promising breakthrough in our careers. With roots in the dynamic Greater China region, we join forces with Redhill to bring both our achievements to the next level.”

Jacob Puthenparambil, CEO of Redhill, commented on the acquisition, saying that the company has long admired the excellent work of CCG, both having built a strong working relationship over the past two years.

“CCG brings with it not only regional experience and presence but also a high-quality team in Hong Kong and Greater China region. This is an important milestone for Redhill as we set our sights on acquiring like-minded agencies across the world, as we further our mission to be a global agency with Asian roots,” Puthenparambil said.

This January, Redhill announced the elevation of several employees across four key divisions following its 2021 end-of-year appraisals to augment its talent development across emerging areas of expertise and services within the agency.

Sydney, Australia – Asian food delivery platform HungryPanda is making its way to the ANZ region by acquiring food delivery app from Australia, EASI, and New Zealand’s food delivery platform BUY@HOME. This follows HungryPanda’s successful US$130m fundraising in December 2021,

HungryPanda has a presence in 10 countries, which includes Australia, alongside US and UK, operating across more than 60 cities. The platform said the acquisition will help it improve its local operations, empower restaurants to achieve business success, and improve consumer experience by widening their choice of authentic Asian restaurants. Through this, HungryPanda aims to be the Asian food delivery leader in Australia and New Zealand, bringing the greatest choice of authentic Asian food to customers in all the major cities. 

Kelu Liu, HungryPanda’s founder and CEO, believes that these acquisitions are an important milestone for HungryPanda in continuing to build the leading overseas Asian food delivery platform. 

“By combining our world-class technology and delivery network with the wider coverage of restaurants we can now offer consumers, I am hugely excited about the future potential for our business in these important markets,” said Liu.

Meanwhile, Kitty Lu, EASI’s national operations manager, stated that the strategic alliance will increase its effectiveness and reach in a busy marketplace, both regionally and internationally. 

“EASI has been growing nationally at a rapid pace since our launch in Australia and internationally and we are excited by the potential we can achieve working with Eric and the team at HungryPanda,” said Lu.

London, United Kingdom – Smartly.io, a global social advertising software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, has announced the acquisition of creative optimization platform Ad-Lib.io. Said acquisition advances Smartly.io’s cross-channel reach from social to now include dynamic creative optimization across programmatic, CTV and the entire Google ecosystem.

In addition, Smartly.io’s SaaS solution for social advertising will now be augmented by Ad-Lib.io’s enterprise suite of creative tools for YouTube, DV360 and Google Ads campaigns. The industry is seeing a growing demand for solutions that bring creative and media closer together across all channels.

Kristo Ovaska, CEO and co-founder at Smartly.io, said that the past two years have proven that creative technology has become the most important lever for driving digital advertising performance.

“Ad-Lib.io is a clear leader in the creative space by innovating on the mission-critical dimensions of workflow, automation, brand governance, personalization and insight. Their knowledge of the Google stack is unmatched in the industry and combining that with Smartly.io’s deep understanding of Facebook and the social stack across creative, media and data allows us to now serve customers across all major digital channels,” Kristo said.

Meanwhile, Oli Marlow-Thomas, founder and president at Ad-Lib.io, commented, “Smartly.io is the preeminent leader in delivering creative and media effectiveness for social. With brand marketers and agencies increasingly uniting their social and programmatic teams into integrated digital creative and media investment teams, this is a natural next step for both companies.”

In addition, Adit Abhyankar, CEO at Ad-Lib.io, added, “These teams are currently using multiple technologies or software partners, but going forward they won’t have to. The Smartly.io and Ad-Lib.io solution will provide the connective tissue to maximize creative effectiveness, media buying and creative intelligence.”

Smartly.io has its Asia-Pacific headquarters located in Singapore, while Ad-Lib.io has a presence in Hong Kong.

Manila, Philippines – ASEAN Fintech Group (AFG), a venture corporation focusing on fintech acceleration has acquired digital payments provider JazzyPay, marking the venture corporation’s expansion to the Philippines. The acquisition value of JazzyPay is valued at US$1.8m.

With the acquisition, AFG looks to leverage JazzyPay’s existing partnerships with leading national banks, e-wallets and payment processors of the metropolitan city. The platform’s team of founders and key management personnel will continue to spearhead the business’ growth, with accelerated resources and support at the group level. 

Kathleen Acosta-Marindo, co-founder and COO at JazzyPay said, “We believe working together and being a part of AFG’s fast-growing portfolio of companies will enhance our capabilities across ASEAN, fast-tracking the advancement of Southeast Asia’s fintech ecosystem and digital future.”

AFG’s expansion to the Philippines is part of its 2022 plans, which include expansion into Vietnam and Cambodia. AFG aims to create a regional omnichannel platform in the fintech space.

To date, AFG has in total invested more than US$10m to date on strategic mergers and acquisitions of burgeoning fintech startups within the region. Founders and institutional investors of the startups joining ASEAN Fintech Group were further incentivized with newly issued AFG shares, forming new partnerships with aligned interests towards the growth of the group. 

For Douglas Gan, executive director at ASEAN Fintech Group, with fintech in Southeast Asia seeing a tremendous growth in 2021, they are bullish that this rapid growth will continue into 2022 as they continue to acquire and merge with companies in the ASEAN region showing solid fundamentals.

“In fact, most of the companies that have joined us come with strong founders whose businesses are either profitable or near profitability. We also see a more matured fintech regulatory framework, guiding us through the complexities of each market. We are at a true inflection point for ASEAN fintech and we are honored to have the support of the fintech ecosystem at large,” Gan stated.

Seoul, South Korea – B2LiNK, a brand aggregator for K-beauty products, has announced that it will be acquiring Picky Inc., a community skincare app through a formal agreement set to close this month. Said acquisition follows B2LiNK’s total fundraising to US$23m since being founded in 2014.

The acquisition enables B2LiNK to bolster its leadership position and global lineup of beauty brands and helps Picky to leverage B2LiNK’s network and resources to further expand its strong community base and global reach.

As part of the acquisition, Picky founder and CEO Jihong Lee will join B2LiNK as chief marketing officer and board member, leveraging his career experience that spans international roles with Google and Supercell. 

“In what has been a challenging time for startups worldwide, we’re proud to have gained an avid following of hundreds of thousands of regular users in our skincare community. Our team set our sights on the global marketplace on day one, and the opportunity to keep that momentum going with the resources behind B2LiNK is the perfect match,” Lee stated.

To date, B2LiNK has extended its portfolio to include seven brands that have surpassed US$30m annual recurring revenue in 2021, including its flagship brand Skin1004.

Meanwhile, for Nate Sohyung Lee, co-founder and CEO at B2LiNK, with K-beauty being a global phenomenon, there is a seemingly endless pool of unique indie brands relevant for global beauty consumers. He added that they have access to established distribution channels to meet the demand for K-Beauty products everywhere.

“We’re helping K-Beauty products become much more accessible in more markets through our deep experience in the retail business and world-class global marketing team. With the Picky acquisition, we’ve strengthened our team and firmly established our No. 1 market position in Korea,” he stated.

Picky aims to build on its strong community base of more than 250,000 global users and growth throughout 2021. Its web and mobile app-based community has established itself as an ‘every day’ app for skincare enthusiasts, including those passionate about K-Beauty products.

Manila, Philippines – Shakey’s Pizza Asia Venture, Inc, the Asia-Pacific arm of global restaurant chain group Shakey’s has announced the acquisition of Potato Corner, a local food kiosk brand specializing in flavored French fries.

Through the acquisition, Shakey’s will purchase assets and intellectual property relating to the Potato Corner business. This will also involve owning and operating all company-owned stores, as well as serving as brand-owner and franchisor of stores being operated by franchisees both domestically and internationally.

Vicente Gregor, president and chief executive officer at Pizza Asia Venture, Inc, said, “Potato Corner is a bankable addition to PIZZA’s roster of WOW brands. Its co-founder, lose Magsaysay, has truly established a solid brand foundation with a product that universally resonates with consumers.”

He added, “The current scale of Potato Corner and the brand love that it receives from consumers are a testament to that We, at PIZZA, are grateful that Potato Corners former owners are entrusting the brand to our team. We look forward to continuing on its legacy and strengthening the Potato Corner brand even more!.”

Since its inception in 1992, Shakey’s Pizza Asia venture has built a network of over 1,000 outlets domestically and has a growing international footprint in Asia and beyond. For instance, Shakey’s had first opened its Singaporean branch in January this year.

During that launch, Jose Arnold Alvero, Shakey’s vice President for international operations and franchising, said, “The primary target market initially will be Filipinos living in the city-state. But the Lucky Plaza outlet is also seen to attract Singaporeans, as it is located along a busy business district.”

Manila, Philippines — UnionBank, the seventh-largest publicly-listed bank in the Philippines, has announced that it will now be acquiring Citigroup’s (Citi) consumer banking business in the country. 

In April this year, Citi shut down its consumer business in the country, including 12 other markets such as Australia, China, India, and Indonesia to move the focus to its Institutional Clients Group. For the acquisition, UnionBank said it has entered into a ‘share and business transfer agreement’ with various subsidiaries of Citi.

UnionBank’s transactions will now include Citi’s credit card, personal loans, wealth management, and retail deposit businesses. The acquisition also includes Citi’s real estate interests in relation to Citibank Square in Eastwood, 3 full-service bank branches, 5 wealth centers, and 2 bank branch offices.

Erramon Isidro Aboitiz, UnionBank’s chairman, said that the acquisition further cements its position as a leading bank in the Philippines, and will help fast-track its growth aspirations in the retail banking segment.

Meanwhile, Edwin Bautista, UnionBank’s president and chief executive officer, commented that they look forward to leapfrogging their credit card business and significantly expanding their banking business in the higher-end segment of the consumer market.

“As we embark on this journey, we are committed to retaining all of Citi’s key talents and upholding the superior customer experience that Citi has delivered to its customers over the years,” said Bautista.

UnionBank said that Citi will continue to operate its consumer banking business in the Philippines until the completion of the acquisition, which is expected to close in the second half of 2022. Moreover, approximately 1,750 Citi employees, including senior management, are expected to join UnionBank next year.

New York, USA – Tech giant Microsoft has announced that it will be acquiring Xandr, the advertising and analytics division of multinational telecommunications company AT&T. Said acquisition is built on a decade-long relationship between the two companies, including its predecessor companies, and Microsoft for delivering global digital media solutions for advertisers. In fact, Microsoft had recently partnered with Xandr this year as its global media space monetization partner.

With Xandr, Microsoft aims to accelerate the delivery of digital advertising solutions for the open web by combining Microsoft’s audience understanding, technology and global advertising customer base with Xandr’s large-scale, data-driven platforms for advertising.

Some of these platforms include first-party data-centered buying platform Xandr Invest, full funnel marketing offering Xandr Monetize, and native ad buying solution Microsoft Audience Network.

Mike Welch, executive vice president and general manager at Xandr said, “Microsoft’s shared vision of empowering a free and open web and championing an open industry alternative via a global advertising marketplace makes it a great fit for Xandr. We look forward to using our innovative platform to help accelerate Microsoft’s digital advertising and retail media capabilities.”

Microsoft and Xandr both said that they share visions and complementary strengths to empower the open web, where everyone can thrive and do so in a way that is consistent with their commitment to strong data governance and consumer privacy practices.

Mikhail Parakhin, president of web experiences at Microsoft, commented, “With Xandr’s talent and technology, Microsoft can accelerate the delivery of its digital advertising and retail media solutions, shaping tomorrow’s digital ad marketplace into one that respects consumer privacy preferences, understands publishers’ relationships with consumers and helps advertisers meet their goals.”