Indonesia’s first virtual personal assistant service YesBoss announced today that it has acquired HeyKuya, a Philippine-based personal assistant service, for an undisclosed amount. The said acquisition is YesBoss initial move for aggressive regional expansion.
By being part of YesBoss Group, the startup will gain operational expertise and efficient technology. According to Shahab Shabibi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of HeyKuya, now Managing Director of YesBoss Philippines, “With YesBoss, we found a partner who has the same passion. This enables values as a company.”
With this acquisition, YesBoss has now become the largest on-demand personal assistance service in both Indonesia and Philippines. Within just 8 months since its launch in June 2015, YesBoss has also gained rapid momentum with over 100.000 processed requests.
Irzan Raditya, Chief Executive Officer of YesBoss, said, “that this acquisition opens the opportunity to grow the base of satisfied customers on a regional level.”
“Our current and future users will also be benefited whenever they are traveling around Southeast Asia because they will get the same level of service from their virtual personal assistant,” explained Irzan.
Managing Partner of 500 Startups and YesBoss’ investor Khailee Ng, said, “I am really looking forward to what YesBoss and HeyKuya can achieve together because I see that the on-demand assistance wave is taking Southeast Asia-not only Indonesia-by storm and this collaboration is a testament to that.”
With the deep customer-centric and serving culture that both YesBoss and HeyKuya has, Irzan also adds that the next goal is to achieve unprecedented growth by leveraging the quality of service in handling people’s demands. “Conversational commerce in Southeast Asia is the next big thing and we believe that one of the keys to win this space in Southeast Asia is by having collaboration.”
HeyKuya was founded in October 2015, built and backed by Machine Ventures. Since then, it has been providing services ranging from food delivery to travel booking through SMS to over 15.000 users. The team is handling more than 500 requests per day.
