A Groupon store in Singapore, around 2012.
After nabbing Groupon Indonesia and Groupon Malaysia, the Fave group has come for the Singapore version of the daily deals site. Fave, which has a similar mandate, announced today it has acquired Groupon Singapore.
Details about the deal have not been disclosed.
The Fave group evolved out of Malaysian fitness subscription service KFit. While KFit is still available as a separate service and app, it’s now part of Fave along with Groupon Indonesia. Groupon Malaysia has been completely integrated into Fave, and Groupon Indonesia and Singapore will follow in 2017.
Groupon has gradually faded from view, abandoning a number of countries in 2015 and laying off staff. In Asia, it exited the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand, and sold a majority stake in South Korean ecommerce company Ticket Monster.
KFit and Fave co-founder Joel Neoh.
It’s more and more of a homecoming for Fave and KFit founder Joel Neoh, who used to be CEO of Groupon Malaysia and later head of Groupon’s Asia-Pacific operations.
Back in November, he told Tech in Asia that Fave is 90 percent the original Groupon in the region, even before bringing in the Singapore branch. However, Joel wants Fave to be more than Groupon was, by adding more services and paying more attention to localization.
While admitting concerns over whether the business model is viable, Joel said at the time that the company managed to get 80 percent of merchants in Indonesia to adopt digital voucher redemption, versus just 5 percent before the acquisition.
Other plans include offering cashback and point rewards rather than just discounts.
The company hopes that Singapore’s high smartphone usage and a tech-savvy userbase is a good fit with its mobile-first approach in the online-to-offline space.
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