Old wine in a new bottle?

Malaysia’s Fave struggles to get cashback train on track

One pivot, a series of acquisitions, and a US$4 million down round later, Fave is still struggling to find a strong footing for its business. It’ll soon have to face larger and better-funded competitors that are encroaching its offline loyalty space

Ka Kay Lum, 15 Dec 2020

Fave had its valuation slashed by more than half to US$34 million after raising money from Indian payments unicorn Pine Labs in July

After pivoting from a fitness platform, it acquired Groupon’s businesses in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, and added a payments aggregator to help offline merchants grow sales

But competition is rife in the loyalty and payments space. Slow revenue growth and widening losses are proving that Fave has been having a tough time

While the pandemic sped up Fave’s adoption among merchants, the onus is now on the startup to prove its value, with some help from its newest investor

Raising money during a pandemic is no easy feat. Especially a startup landing a strategic deal from a billion-dollar valued company. So when Malaysian offline-to-online (O2O) payments and rewards platform Fave closed an undisclosed funding undisclosed funding Pine Labs Fave announces strategic partnership and investment from Pine Labs to accelerate Southeast Asia's cashless future Read more round from India’s payments unicorn Pine Labs in July 2020, people sat up and took notice.

It wasn’t long before the initial optimism was tempered.

AUTHOR

Ka Kay Lum

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Ka Kay covers investment activities, aka following the money, across Southeast Asia and in-depth stories on the often-overlooked Malaysian startup ecosystem. She was previously a regional writer for Nikkei-owned DealStreetAsia.

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