Robinhood is planning to become a regional “super application” according to the tech startup that operates the platform in Thailand, in 2022. The Thai food delivery platform has been operating for a year and has 2.3 million registered users. It also has 164,000 merchants and roughly 20,000 riders, according to chairman Thana Thienachariya, of Purple Ventures.
Purple Ventures is a tech startup of the SCB group. It does not charge gross profit, nor does it charge commission fees from merchants. Most of the users on the platform are customers of SCB. Many of them have SCB credit cards. They have higher purchasing power when compared with users who use other platforms.
Mr. Thana also said that the food delivery platform had the advantage of cross selling services to existing clients and also to expand its base of customers. It could also contribute greater income from advertisements, commissions and digital loan services.
Next year, Robinhood wants to grow its customer base and reach 4 million users and 300,000 merchants. It is also aiming to expand its operations and diversify into three different categories:
Robinhood Travel
Robinhood Mart
Robinhood Express goods delivery service.
Robinhood began its operations in 2020. SCB gave the platform an initial investment budget of 150 million baht. It expects its investment budget to be in the range of 4 to 5 billion baht within the next couple of years.
Mr Thana said that the company plans to be a regional app in its next phase and it has been investigating potential regional markets as well as different business models to achieve this plan, in Thailand and abroad.
Although the Robinhood platform began operations using SCB’s current digital payments, it plans to join with other financial partners. In future, the food delivery platform that will expand into travel, supermarket delivery and express goods delivery services. It plans to have both banking and non-banking partners as it expands its operations.
Image Credit Source Bangkok SCB
