Fave has taken over the face of Groupon, and since then we’ve seen a couple of phases in its rebranding and other stuff.

Like the dropping of the Goods section of the website.

With all that’s been going on, you might wonder about what has happened to Groupon. We’re here to tell you the story of Groupon Singapore and how it became Fave.

The Beginnings

The co-founders of Groupon are Karl Chong and Chris Chong. Yes, both of them are brothers la.

Their start up wasn’t under the name of Groupon, but Beeconomic. Before this, Karl (the elder bro) was working as an investment banker in New York, and his brother Chris was doing his law degree in Sydney.

The two of them moved to Singapore (one left his job, the other took a break from his degree course), only to realise they needed to make their money work.

So, in 2010, they came up with the idea of a deal hunter website – Beeconomic.

The cash they had in hand was only $50,000 (their life savings, sob sob) and a bright spark of an idea on how their site should work.

It really was a no brainer la, you see. We Singaporeans have a very high Internet penetration rate. And our history of online shopping is LEGENDARY.

They emailed everyone they could, but came up empty. Finally, their parents (Malaysians based in Sydney) gave them their blessings. They had so little money between them, they had to eat cai png for every SINGLE meal.

They even resorted to finding a food court that had free WiFi. In a span of 3 months, they were able to hire a small team of 8 staff to work with them, and finally move out of their hostel and into an office mate’s home.

Six months down the line, Groupon US REPLIED their original email (they sent out tons!) and offered to start a strategic partnership with them. Beeconomic was also pitching themselves against the rest in the game, but as far as performance went, these guys really had it going.

While no actual figure was ever given about the buyout amount, it is believed to be somewhere in the range of $24 million!

And wowza, Groupon Singapore was born.

Groupon to Fave

Fave Group was started back in the year 2015, and is led by Groupon’s own former head here in the Asia Pacific, Joel Neoh. The company considers itself the leader in online-to-offline local-based commerce in APAC.

Before getting into Groupon Singapore, Fave Group acquired Groupon Indonesia in June 2016, and Groupon Malaysia last November.

Fave Singapore’s MD, Ng Aik Phong says that the deals-and-discounts business can be reaped further, as it hasn’t fully penetrated the e-commerce market here.

Plans are being looked into with the introduction of cashbacks, tie-ins with shopping malls and even one-of-a-kind curated collections.

Hmm… Looks like Fave is definitely going to take its online sales to new heights. Can’t wait to see what they’re bringing up next. As it is, they’ve already launched FavePay!

So, for a summary, here’s what happened: Groupon bought over Beeconomic and converted it into Groupon Singapore and Fave bought over Groupon Singapore.

It’s a company with many exits, indeed.

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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