PLDT buying e-commerce startup for $5M

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. is spending $5 million to acquire a Singapore-based e-commerce startup, in line with plans to grow its digital presence.

PLDT said in a stock exchange filing on Tuesday that its unit, Voyager Innovations Inc., had agreed to acquire shares of Paywhere Pte. Ltd. PLDT said the deal was expected to close within the third quarter of 2015, subject to certain conditions, which it did not reveal.

It added that $3 million would be paid upfront while the balance of $2 million would be payable to certain vendors as “deferred consideration.”

Paywhere is the company behind online store creator TackThis!, Voyager’s cloud based e-commerce platform that operates on a software as a service (SaaS) model.

TackThis! allows entrepreneurs and businesses to set up their online store in just a few steps, apart from allowing them to showcase their products on various online platforms, manage their store inventory, and accept payments through a variety of local providers.

Moreover, the startup allows merchants to easily integrate their stores to social media sites like Facebook, as well as blog sites like Tumblr and Blogspot, or personal blogs.

The TackThis! e-commerce platform has 30,000 registered users across Southeast Asia where it is complemented by Takatack, an online shopping discovery platform for various products including those posted using TackThis!