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Offpeak also announced a strategic partnership with Supply Bunny and the launch of a localised platform for Malaysia
The Malaysian-based restaurant discovery platform, Offpeak, announced today it has received a undisclosed strategic investment from YJ Capital, the corporate venture arm of Yahoo Japan.
Today’s news marks YJ Capital’s first lead investment in a Malaysian company.
“The roll-out and growth rate of Offpeak in Southeast Asia is commendable and impressive. We expect Offpeak to continue this momentum for the future, too,” said Shinichiro Hori, COO of YJ Capital in an official statement.
The VC firm Gobi Partners — who had previously been the sole investor in the company’s Series A round — also participated in the investment.
Tan Ban Eu, the Co-founder of Offpeak, said the money will be used for customer acquisition, expansion and feature enhancement.
“[The investor’s] knowledge and expertise in the F&B O2O space will be invaluable for our growth. With this, we believe that their support will allow us to leapfrog our business plans,” he said.
Also Read: Malaysia-based startup Offpeak bags US$117,000 grant from Cradle Fund
Offpeak is a company that fuses online restaurant discovery with a discount service. Basically, users are incentivised to try out new restaurants in their area by getting a certain percentage off their meal when they make a reservation through Offpeak.
For restaurants it is a tool to get more people through the door by making people more willing to branch out of their usual go-to dining options.
In additional news today, Offpeak also announced a strategic partnership with Supply Bunny, an online platform to help F&B managers find suppliers for all sorts of items. Supply Bunny is also a portfolio company of Gobi Partners.
The startup also launched Syokmakan, a Bahasa Malaysia version of the portal to help in the company’s localisation effort.
Besides Malaysia, Offpeak has a presence in Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The Vietnamese and Thai websites are both in the local language and Singapore’s site is in English.
Also Read: Malaysian F&B marketplace Supplybunny raises US$300K in Seed funding from Gobi Partners
Offpeak claims to have 2,600 restaurants on its platform — a significant increase in its number of 600 from about 14 months ago (June 2015).
The company says it seats one diner every fourty seconds.
In the broader context of the Malaysian startup ecosystem, the news comes just days after another foodtech startup SmartBite raised funding and just a couple weeks after Supplybunny raised its seed funding from Gobi Partners.
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