Thai reward points exchange platform ChomCHOB announced on Thursday that it has secured THB 50 million (USD 1.6 million) in a Series A round led by InVent, the venture capital arm of the country’s telecom giant Intouch Holdings.
With other investors including 500 TukTuks, SIX Network, Yello Digital Marketing, and Computerlogy, the startup plans to use the new capital to expand across the region, tapping on the growing population of the digital economy, as well as scale its platform, expand the team, and for marketing activities.
Founded in 2015, the ChomCHOB app allows users to transform their credit card and member card points into ChomCHOB points that can be exchanged for goods and services provided by the merchants. Currently, the platform claims that it has amassed 3 million customers and 500,000 merchants.
Nout Chutisowan, chief executive and co-founder of ChomCHOB, told the Bangkok Post that the firm plans to become the leading points exchange platform in the region by 2025.
As the e-commerce sector continues to grow, reward and loyalty services like ChomCHOB have helped to entice customers and build up loyalty among customers. A report by Facebook and Bain & Company highlighted the importance of loyalty programs to create stickiness with the customers.
“Respondents with a loyalty program spend more and buy more often across categories. They are also more likely to be promoters, who spend three times more across categories. Asked why they take part in loyalty program, members said they primarily do so because of long-term savings,” said the report.
Southeast Asia’s internet economy is set to grow to USD 300 billion by 2025, compared with USD 100 billion in 2019, according to a report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company in 2019. With over 360 million internet users in the region, 90% of them connect to the internet primarily through their mobile phones.