SingTel goes shopping again; buys food review site HungryGoWhere

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has signed an agreement to acquire GTW Holdings,  a local startup that runs online food review service HungryGoWhere, for S$12 million. GTW will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SingTel and its operations will be merged with lifestyle and local search arm inSing.com, said a press release.

HungryGoWhere is the third startup that SingTel has acquired this year. In March, it bought based mobile advertising startup, Amobee, for US$321 million. Subsequently, Amobee acquired Adjitsu, a 3D mobile advertising business unit in May. Both Amobee and AdJitsu are based in Silicon Valley.

“A cornerstone of SingTel’s growth strategy is to build digital solutions that help consumers in their daily lives.  Possessing the local knowledge and content is critical as it allows us to compete effectively in these areas,” Allen Lew, CEO Group Digital Life, SingTel, said in the press release on the HungryGoWhere acquisition. Group Digital Life is a new business division that came into effect from April 1 when SingTel reorganized itself into three divisions (the other two are Group Consumer and Group ICT) to better position itself as a multimedia player. The Group Digital Life division includes Amobee, SingTel’s venture capital investment arm Singtel Innov8, NextGen TV and ecommerce, among other businesses.

HungryGoWhere was founded in 2007 by Dennis Goh and Wong Hoong An and currently has an online presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia.

The combination of HungryGoWhere and inSing.com will create an audience of two million customers, the largest food and lifestyle audience in Singapore. SingTel will automated restaurant reservations and use the expertise to expand overseas across Asia. The combined entity  offers access to over 100,000 restaurant reviews, food-related deals and discounts, information on over 15,000 restaurants and hawker stalls across desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

HungryGoWhere has recently developed and launched the TableDB Reservation Platform, built on tablet solutions, which gives restauranteurs a super-charged reservation book that is as mobile and easy to use as traditional pen-and-paper.  Restaurants are not only able to take and manage reservations, but also improve in-house productivity and provide customers with higher levels of service through TableDB’s unique CRM tools.

Image Courtesy: HungryGoWhere