HBM said yesterday that it had invested seven-digit US dollars in Priceza through its business unit called Burda Principal Investment, which it set up last year to offer long-term equity for fast-growing digital technology and media companies.

HBM has taken over the initial stake of CyberAgent Ventures, giving it 24.9 per cent of the company. The remaining 76.1 per cent of shares is retained by the three founders.

Thanawat Malabuppha, chief executive officer and co-founder of Priceza, said the Series B investment would be spent on three areas – improving its technology platform, expanding its team and spreading its wings over the region.

“Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market is still not dominated by any single giant and the market is price-sensitive, so a price comparison and shipping search engine is a service with potential.

“Price comparison has been rapidly growing in Southeast Asia, as reflected by the doubling of Priceza’s traffic,” he said.

Priceza’s service is available in six markets of Southeast Asia with more than a million e-commerce websites, or merchants, and more than 59 million items.

The company aims to grow tenfold from 70 million visits last year to 700 million in 2020.

 Also, the number of merchants available for price comparisons should rise to 10 million by that time.

“Our six markets combine 13 million visits per month, leading to Bt300 million for the e-commerce merchants,” Thanawat said.

Priceza’s revenue comes from advertising via cost per click and commissions. Of the 59 million items listed and compared on Priceza, half are free and half paid by ads.

Friedrich von Scanzoni, chief executive officer of Burda Asia, said that this year, the company planned to spend US$20 million (Bt693 million) to invest in three start-ups in Southeast Asia, and Priceza is the first.

“We are looking for investing in good businesses and good entrepreneurs in many areas including platform services, e-commerce and travel,” he said.

“We focus on investing in Series B plus with investment starting from seven-digit US dollars to eight-digit US dollars.”

This is in line with the company’s strategy to invest in a great team and a robust e-commerce ecosystem.

“We have been investing in e-commerce companies for the past 20 years and understand the price comparison space very well.