The super app business model is paying dividends in Southeast Asia.
Offerings from Grab, “the everyday everything app,” run the gamut from grocery delivery to investment services; Malaysia-based AirAsia has rebranded itself as Capital A as it expands its offerings to encompass ride hailing, food delivery and much more.
These companies aren’t building these new business units from scratch: They’re using strategic acquisitions to enter new markets and fence out the competition.
“As more tech companies look to the super app business model to retain users and increase monetization, we could expect more inorganic expansion and consolidation in the coming years,” says Amit Anand, founding partner of Jungle Ventures.
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Today is Wednesday the 15th of June 2022. As much as we like to live in the now, we’re hella excited about tomorrow! Over on Twitter Spaces at noon PDT tomorrow, we’ll be talking with our immigration expert Sophie (who today shared what the best visa is for bootstrapping a startup). Clicky to set a reminder for yourself right now! We’ll also have our online day for TC Sessions: Climate tomorrow, so tune in for that as well if you’re a fan of climate and the crispiness level of our planet. Woohoo! — Haje and Christine
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Them’s fightin’ words: Dukaan, an Indian company that helps merchants set up e-commerce businesses, is challenging Shopify, even getting down and dirty on Twitter, Manish reports. The company’s aim is to speed up performance of websites, claiming Shopify’s speed and performance is causing merchants to lose out on sales if customers have to wait even a few additional seconds for sites to load.
- Who knew market reports were so lucrative?: AlphaSense did. The global pandemic combined with market uncertainty gave the company, which is an analysis and business intel search engine, the boost it needed to go after $225 million in new funding, Ingrid writes. This not only gives AlphaSense a $1.7 billion valuation, but also proves that even in this counternarrative environment, it’s still good for some.
- BNPL firms continue to duke it out: We can’t tell if consumers will be the winner as so many companies offer “buy now, pay later,” but it’s fun to see them all trying to one-up each other. The latest is PayPal, which is expanding its BNPL feature with a monthly pay service, Sarah tells us. This means that instead of taking 6 weeks to pay, users can now spread out payments over a 6-month to 24-month period. But be warned, customers can’t use it for a $30 T-shirt; purchases have to be between $199 and $10,000.
Startups and VC
In the world of startups, Haje made his debut on our Equity podcast, talking with Natasha M and Alex about how we are entering an era of…shall we say creative accounting.
Unrelated to creative accounting, and crypto crash be damned, Binance CEO Brian Shroder told employees yesterday that the company is “in the strongest position possible to not only successfully weather this downturn but also emerge as the leading crypto platform in the U.S.,” Anita reports.
Let’s take a stroll in startup land, looking through the lens of TechCrunch’s reporting over the past 24 hours or so: