Dealguru eats up rival Asian Room Service to heap pressure on Rocket-backed Food Panda

There’s consolidation in Asia’s growing online food delivery space after Dealguru, the firm behind Southeast Asia buying site Deal.com.sg, found its appetite and gobbled up rival Asia Room Service on undisclosed terms.

The deal will see Room Service Deliveries merged into Deal.com.sg’s 6-month-old ‘Dealivery’ service, the result (which requires no baking) will be Southeast Asia’s largest single food delivery specialist – and a key rival to Rocket Internet-backed Food Panda.

No more food-based jokes now, I promise. But, humor aside, the deal is significant one as the number of industries, products and consumer demand at the juncture of food and technology is growing in Southeast Asia, creating a potentially very lucrative space.

That opportunity was clearly illustrated when Rocket Internet, the German incubator notorious for spitting out clones of popular sites and services, launched Food Panda, alongside four other e-commerce focused startups, in Southeast Asia in March. The company is known for getting into promising new markets and niches as quickly as possible, with a view to scaling and selling for profit, while SingTel provided another proof point with its $9.4 million purchase of HungryGoWhere in May.

Nine-year-old Room Service Deliveries was active in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia but its acquisition will massively boost the Dealivery service, taking the number of culinary establishments supported to 400 across Southeast Asia.

There’s no immediate word on whether the new entity will be expanding into new markets in the region but, given its status as the largest site of its kind, we’d expect it has the stomach to do so. Food Panda is active in seven Asia markets — India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan — and, rather randomly, Colombia, although the Rocket Internet company has less merchants in Southeast Asia.

The fruits of the union will be a new co-branded site: Roomservicedeliveries.com.

Image via Flickr / Ecstatic Mark