OR invests USD 4 million in GoWabi in Series A Plus round, marking its entrance into the health and wellness industry to comprehensively meet all lifestyle needs (One-Stop Solution for All Lifestyle) in parallel with the latest consumer behavior trends and needs.
Rajsuda Rungsiyakull, Senior Executive Vice President, ORion Project, PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited (OR), together with GoWabi (Thailand) Co., Ltd. by Samir Cherro, CEO & Co-Founder, Vadim Eremeev, CTO & Co-Founder, and Wipawee Wongsirisak, CCO & Co-Founder, jointly signed an investment agreement executed between Modulus Ventures Company Limited, or Modulus, a subsidiary of OR, and GoWabi (Thailand) Company Limited, an operator of a digital platform that connects consumers to health and beauty services, for which users can discover, search and read real-user reviews before buying an e-Voucher, or booking a service online.
Rajsuda reveals that OR aims to strategically build a new business by leveraging its existing assets and offerings with a focus on creating a seamless experience for consumers by connecting offline businesses to online (Offline-to-Online: O2O) and enhancing OR’s potential to meet the needs of modern consumers. Wellness is one of the industries that OR has been interested in due to its market value and high growth rate. Moreover, the market also clearly reflects the future trends of consumer behavior and consumer demand.
GoWabi is recognized as No. 1 most used platform among those that provide search and reservation features for beauty and health-related services with over 500,000 monthly active users (MAU) and more than 5,000 merchants across the platform.
The collaboration between GoWabi and OR will present more growth opportunities to SMEs and wellness service providers, which are the majority of GoWabi partners, in line with OR’s vision “Empowering All toward Inclusive Growth”.
Samir Cherro reveals that GoWabi is determined to be the No. 1 booking platform for beauty services in Southeast Asia. Currently, GoWabi extends its services to a wide range of categories, among which include beauty clinics, massage and spas, hair salons, eyebrow and eyelash extension salons, nail salons, hair removal salons, dental clinics, etc., with more services added during the past years including medical services, fitness vouchers, beauty products, pet services and at-home delivery available, allowing GoWabi to continue to serve even during the lockdowns.
GoWabi has planned to expand its business to more cities in Thailand as well as other countries in Southeast Asia, while continuing to add more service category and onboard new merchants to meet consumer needs. It also plans to launch a POS system and other related services to facilitate convenient sales management for all merchants.
The investment by OR is considered to be a jumpstart for the development of business cooperation between OR and GoWabi, in which many synergies can be expected across OR’s offline and online platform network, as well as the growth of GoWabi’s online platform.
