SGX Mainboard-listed Challenger Technologies Limited (“Challenger” or the “Group”), today announced it has set up a wholly owned subsidiary Challenge Ventures Pte Ltd (“CVPL”) to focus on investing in companies and businesses to complement Challenger’s existing business.
Over the past 2 years, Challenger Technologies Limited has been aggressively investing in its in-house brand “Valore”, which turns out to be a failure. All Valore concept stores have been converted into Challenger stores.
Challenge Ventures Pte Ltd
I am surprised by how fast Challenger is to come up with new business ideas by starting up Challenge Ventures Pte Ltd. The announcement stated “Challenge Ventures Pte Ltd aims to invest in companies to operate within Challenger’s digital ecosystem by providing support for the group’s business operations, as well as other subsidiaries within the group“. At this point of time, I am still very unsure of the business operating model of Challenge Ventures Pte Ltd as it was only set up on 8th September 2015.
Andios Pte Ltd
Drilling further, I noticed that Challenger has another subsidiary set up early this year, known as Andios Pte Ltd. After doing a search on Google on what Andios Pte Ltd does, I found this description of the company – “Andios is a new innovative e-commerce marketplace portal company targeting at the smart phone market“. Personally, I feel that the internet space is already very saturated with e-commerce websites and the portal will be hard to take off unless prices and services are very competitive. Andios will have to compete with established websites like Amazon, Taobao, Qoo10 etc. Brands like Apple (iPhone) and Mi (Redmi) have their own websites where you can directly order the smart phones from, thus I am curious what kind of extraordinary service Andios Pte Ltd might offer.
Further research shows that the company is still hiring and there are various positions to be filled like Admin Support, Sales and Marketing Executive, Customer Experience Manager and Portal Manager.
My Personal Thoughts
Challenger Technologies Pte Ltd have evolved from a simple retail solution business into electronic signage (CBD Vision Pte Ltd), outsourcing/marketing (inCalls Systems), investments (Challenge Ventures Pte Ltd) and e-commerce (Andios Pte Ltd).
Perhaps the failure of Valore has taught Challenger Technologies that they cannot simply reply on survival in the retail space alone. They have diversified their businesses into many areas but it also means that their business model is becoming complex and difficult to understand.