Grab acquires local restaurant reservation platform Chope, aims to capture more diners in region

RIDE-HAILING company Grab has acquired home-grown restaurant reservation platform Chope for an undisclosed sum and will take over Chope’s operations in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand, according to an internal e-mail seen by The Business Times.

In an e-mail on Monday (Jul 22), Grab’s head of deliveries Ngiam Xin Wei informed employees that the company had closed a deal to acquire Chope, with the latter’s employees set to join Grab’s offices in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand “in a couple of weeks”.

“Chope is a well-known and well-loved brand that operates in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand,” said Ngiam in the e-mail. “They have mature reservations and table management system, which we believe will bolster our omni-commerce strategy, and help accelerate our efforts to capture the dining out opportunity.”

Ngiam said the company sees “a lot of potential” to extend Chope’s services to Grab’s merchant-partner base across the region. The acquisition will also strengthen Grab’s relevance as consumers’ “preferred everyday superapp”.

While Chope has operations in Hong Kong and China as well, Grab will be retaining its operations only in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand.

When contacted by BT, a Grab spokesperson said its focus is to help level the playing field for small and medium-sized food and beverage (F&B) businesses that lack “the same resources or know-how that big F&B brands have”.

With such businesses forming the vast majority of merchants on Grab’s platform, the company hopes to “empower them with tools to grow and manage their businesses more efficiently”.

“We believe the addition of Chope’s products and services provides more synergies for our merchant-partners, especially in helping them capture online-to-offline opportunities,” the spokesperson said, declining to reveal further information.

Founded in 2011 by entrepreneur Arrif Ziaudeen, Chope enables diners to make online reservations for restaurants across Singapore, Jakarta, Bali, Bangkok, Phuket, Hong Kong and Shanghai. According to its website, it has more than 13,000 restaurants in its network and has seated over 100 million diners to date.

Ziaudeen said in a statement: “We have proudly achieved so much on our journey, but considering today’s challenging and competitive market, we have chosen to seek a partner to help us pursue new opportunities for sustainable growth.”

He added that Chope found the “best fit” with Grab after evaluating potential buyers, as both companies share an aligned mission in connecting restaurants to diners.

Chope was in the red from 2018 to 2022, regulatory filings show.

It posted a deeper S$16.1 million loss in 2022, from a S$9.4 million loss in 2021. This was even as its revenue rose to S$31.7 million in 2022, from S$23.7 million the year before. Records for 2023 and 2024 were unavailable.

In December 2022, Chope laid off 24 per cent of its employees from its offices across the region. This included 38 workers from Singapore.

Cross-selling Chope’s services

Following the acquisition, the Grab and Chope teams will work together “to build a stronger, more holistic online-to-offline value proposition for merchants and users in South-east Asia”, said Ngiam.

Grab intends to start cross-selling Chope services to its merchant-partners very soon. The Chope brand, app and website will remain as they are for now, to avoid disruption to Chope’s services for merchants and users.

Full transition and integration of the Chope team will take some time, said Ngiam. For now, the Chope team will remain as a unit under Grab’s Omnicommerce business.

Dinesh Balasingam will remain as chief business officer for Chope and will oversee the team. He reports to Arvind Swaminathan, head of Grab’s dine-out strategy (Omnicommerce). (See *Amendment note)

No roles in Grab will be made redundant as a result of the acquisition. But Ngiam added that “the success of this acquisition depends on strong collaboration between the Grab and Chope teams”, and asked employees to provide “full support in (their) various capacities to help make this transition a smooth and seamless one”.

Grab’s objectives and key results will also remain unchanged for now, she added.

This is not Grab’s first F&B-related acquisition. In June 2022, it announced that it had bought and relaunched food and beverage portal HungryGoWhere.

The website – which offered food reviews, deals and allowed users to make restaurant reservations – ceased operations in 2021. It was previously owned by Singtel.

*Amendment note: An earlier version of the article stated that Dinesh Balasingam was formerly Chope’s regional general manager, based on information from Grab. Grab later corrected this to say this is incorrect.