Wait, what have we missed? This afternoon, it was announced that your daily convenience provider LINE MAN has merged with Wongnai, Thailand’s oldest online food directory platform. Upon the merge, LINE MAN has also received US$110 million funding from BRV Capital Management, a global growth investment firm with presence in South Korea, Japan and China.
The merge between LINE MAN and Wongnai is industry consolidation at its best.
It also marks the first time that a LINE entity has gotten a large cash infusion of this kind for a distinctive localized service, which highlights LINE MAN’s integral success in Thailand.
Wongnai currently has over 10 million monthly active users on its platform, with a database of over 400,000 restaurants across the country. It has since expanded into spas, beauty salons and hotels.
The cash injection will power this new merge and quickly expand its services and operations as both have ambitions to grow even more in the Thai market.
Key Takeaway
Prior to this, LINE MAN and Wongnai had a partnership that allowed users to order food from the Wongnai platform directly, powered by the logistics capabilities of Line Man. The merge is fitting; Thailand’s food delivery ecosystem is vibrant, but not large enough for too many competing players. Whilst Wongnai primarily positions itself as a “restaurant ecosystem portal”, it will be challenging to maintain relevance through a vast database without any new value propositions.
In partnering together, Wongnai will most likely continue to provide data to LINEMAN regarding userbase, restaurants and more, LINEMAN in turn, will bolster delivery for Wongnai’s restaurants and generally consolidate the food delivery ecosystem. LINEMAN will most likely have big, nationwide growth ambitions and perhaps Wongnai can leverage some of this ambition and offer more transactional services on its platform.
