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Optus gobbles up Eatability for AU$6 million

Optus has announced its intention to acquire Eatability for AU$6 million as part of its strategy to strengthen its digital-services offerings.
Written by Spandas Lui, Contributor

Optus is buying restaurant-directory company Eatability for AU$6 million in order to strengthen the telco's digital-services division.

Eatability already has an existing relationship with Optus, being a partner in the telco's goPlaces entertainment guide application.

SingTel, Optus' parent company, went through a major restructuring earlier this year, splitting the business into three distinct units: Group Consumer, Group ICT and Group Digital Life, with the latter taking care of digital services.

Optus said that it sees significant potential in Eatability, which runs www.eatability.com.au and has a vast directory of restaurant listings, ratings and reviews.

Eatability's unaudited net asset value was around AU$70,000 as of December last year.

"Part of Optus and SingTel's Group Digital Life strategy is to build a collection of regional hyper-local and eConcierge businesses that will drive revenue growth by complementing each other to increase traffic and stickiness," an Optus spokesperson told ZDNet Australia. "The acquisition of Eatability is important to building a foundation for this.

"In addition, Eatability will be a strong building block for future transaction-based business and mobile applications in the hyper-local space."

While it will be business as usual for Eatability in the short term, Optus is exploring options to improve the website and add new features in the future, gearing it towards smartphones and personalising the user experience.

Optus plans to keep all of the existing 11 Eatability employees, some of whom are based overseas.

The acquisition is slated to be completed by September.

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