InVent, a corporate venture capital arm of InTouch Holdings Plc, has joined the 50-million-baht Series A funding of ChomCHOB, a points exchange platform, saying the platform has untapped market potential with customers seeking to optimise their points.
Other major investors in the round include 500 TukTuks, a venture capital firm focused on investment in startups in Thailand and Asean, and SIX Network, a joint venture of Ookbee U, Yello Digital Marketing and Computerlogy.
InTouch announced InVent's investment in ChomCHOB in a press release yesterday but did not divulge how much InVent put into the investment.
Founded in 2015, the ChomCHOB app lets people combine credit card points and member card points to become ChomCHOB points, which can be exchanged for goods and services provided by participating businesses.
"We see ChomCHOB as the first points loyalty revolution with over 2 million user downloads," said Narongpon Boonsongpaisan, head of InVent. "It transforms the silo-based loyalty points to increase point liquidity in loyalty schemes by allowing customers to earn and redeem points freely across different rewards programmes.
"We capitalise on ChomCHOB's technology to improve customer experiences, as we see the opportunity for this untapped market to provide a unique offering and to help customers to optimise their points with a simple and seamless way."
ChomCHOB has said it will use the new funding to sign up more merchant partners and prepare for overseas expansion in 2021.
"The pandemic has driven the points exchange as consumers make more purchases online," Nout Chutisowan, chief executive and co-founder of ChomCHOB, told the Bangkok Post.
ChomCHOB transactions have grown 3-5 times since the pandemic began, meaning the platform broke even in the first half of the year, Mr Nout said.
Most users are aged 20-50, he said.
The platform will expand the range of services, including turning collected points into e-money in e-wallets, such as TrueMoney Wallet and Rabbit Line Pay. Points will also be available for use in various payments, such as electricity bills.
ChomCHOB, which has 3 million customers and 500,000 merchant partners, earns money from transaction fees and serves as a sales engine for businesses taking part in its points exchange services, Mr Nout said.
The platform also offers a new feature whereby users can make savings with points and earn interest with points that can be redeemed later, he said.
The company plans to expand ChomCHOB across Asean to serve the growing population of the digital economy and aims to become the No.1 points exchange platform in the region by 2025, Mr Nout said.
The growth of ChomCHOB will be aligned with the untapped market for rewards points with a total of 300 billion points converted from 30 billion baht of money value annually in Thailand, he said.
Pahrada Sapprasert, director of 500 TukTuks, said ChomCHOB can help tackle a large problem in the market -- unused loyalty points -- with more than 47 billion points rewarded a year.
"Only a small portion of that is actually redeemed," she said.