Society Pass eyes e-commerce firms as it enters Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Technology firm Society Pass (SoPa) is looking to acquire e-commerce based businesses in the Philippines as part of its expansion in Southeast Asia.

In a virtual conference, Sopa founder, chairman and CEO Dennis Nguyen said the company is entering the country and  would open  its office in Manila in the next few weeks.

“We are currently talking to four to five companies in the Philippines for potential acquisitions and if those are consummated, then Society Pass will have a very large, bigger presence in Manila,” he said.

The company’s expansion to the Philippines comes following its $28 million landmark initial public offer (IPO) on NASDAQ last month.

SoPa  operates a loyalty platform which allows consumers to earn points from transactions which they can redeem with partner merchants.

Nguyen said the beta version of the app is set to be launched in the market towards the end of the month.

The company also operates lifestyle e-commerce platform Leflair in Vietnam.

Nguyen said the company intends to continue to build and expand the e-commerce platform to the Philippines in the first half of next year.

“The Philippines is a key component of SoPa’s VIP (Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines) regional expansion strategy,” he said.

Citing the country’s over 100 million population and median age in the 20s, he said the Philippines offers a huge market for internet products and services.

“Philippines is a society built for e-commerce and Filipinos have taken to it in a huge way – the landscape has exploded with over 88,000 new e-commerce businesses being registered in the last year alone. This makes it an extremely fertile landscape that completely aligns with our acquisition focused growth strategy,” he said.

“The runaway success of Leflair in Vietnam and the response to our IPO has demonstrated the markets confidence in our business model and investment case, and we look to replicate our success in the Philippines,” he said.

Headquartered in Singapore, SoPa also has offices in Vietnam, while its software development center is in India.