Incite Foodtech Sdn Bhd, a Malaysia-based food tech venture, has agreed to acquire Eatcosys Sdn Bhd, a homegrown retail technology solutions provider, to create ASEAN’S retail tech ecosystem.
“The acquisition will enable us to advance our ambition of building a comprehensive, unified retail tech ecosystem in ASEAN region, which comprises consumer tech, retail marketing solutions, retail tech solutions and fintech services,” Incite Foodtech Chief Executive Officer Karen S Puah said in a statement on Tuesday.
The move witnesses both parties combining expertise and capabilities and diversifying their offerings to create a unified retail ecosystem that benefits both the business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) segments.
This development also will be a fitting response to the latest government demand for industry players to develop more innovative products and market development strategies by leveraging the digital economy to revolutionise the retail industry.
According to the statement, the ecosystem’s business model comprises of four divisions including the consumer sector, which focuses on food and beverage brands and future expansion will include groceries, convenience stores, pharmacies, and electrical appliances chain stores.
It also includes retail marketing solutions that offer redemption programmes, licensed-character promotions, merchant partnerships, and user activation; retail tech solutions, which focuses on point-of-sales, customer relationship management, data analytics, and payment gateway; and fintech services comprise digital lending, equity crowdfunding and venture capital.
The live transactional data from the consumer sector, retail marketing solutions and retail tech solutions is harvested as guiding benchmarks for fintech services.
All offerings related to finance are licenced by the Ministry of Local Government Development Malaysia and Bank Negara Malaysia, and regulated by the Securities Commission Malaysia.
“Both parties aim to revolutionise the retail tech market in Malaysia, embedded with fintech. It couldn not have come at a better time for us to join forces and build a comprehensive ecosystem, with an initial public offering (IP)O as the ultimate goal,” said Tham Lih Chung, Co-Founder and Chairman of Eatcosys.
Tham, who will be listed as the Group Chief Executive Officer, stated they aim to hit MYR100 million ($23,000) in revenue within 12 months and are looking at expanding their business operations in the ASEAN region.
Incite Foodtech Sdn Bhd is a food tech venture headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. The venture creates and acquires quick-serving-beverage-and-food (QSBF) brands that satisfy customer needs and sentiment by leveraging on big data.
With its unique and “plug-in and scale” business model, Incite Foodtech supercharges QSBF brands development in a variety of formats, including physical outlets, shared space, kiosks, and cloud kitchens.
As of the third quarter of 2022, Incite Foodtech operates in more than 25 locations with eight brands under its QSBF brands portfolio (Union Artisan Coffee, Hope Coffee, Eggdicted, Lada Merah, Wondermama, Halley, Goodbooch and K-Pop Grille).
Eatcosys is a one-stop retail technology solutions provider fronted by a group of specialists with a steadfast commitment: to support the underserved and unserved businesses with a broad suite of retail and digital services.
Its all-round solutions include a cloud-based POS system, CRM software, loyalty management, a transit advertising platform, e-commerce platforms, data insights, and financial services to address the business hurdles for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Eatcosys goal is to build a network that empowers enterprises and start- ups to grow, thrive, and sustain long-term prospects.