Who Owns Jaya Grocer
and Village Grocer?

Malaysia’s premium two: from family sundry shops to Grab and a Thai conglomerate

I live in the suburbs and go to the nearby premium supermarket. I buy yoghurt, check the discount shelf, and look at the price tags while I am at it. Gradually, what lay behind the shelves began to interest me more than the shelves. Who owns this shop? Digging in, I found eighty years of two families, the ride-hailing app Grab, and a Thai conglomerate.

Shinya Takei, Managing Partner, GASPARD & CO.2 November 2026

Bagged leafy greens in the produce section of a premium supermarket under green signs — The produce section of my local premium supermarket. The sign says “Flown in fresh.” This year, the owner of these green signs became a Thai company.

A suburban kitchen

We live in Gamuda Cove, in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. Not because the rent is cheap. We wanted to avoid traffic and find a secure neighbourhood with plenty of foreigners, and that turned out to be the suburbs. Malaysia is relatively safe, but safety is not free; you buy it. A foreign family ends up living somewhere with 24-hour security. Part of the rent is the guards’ salary.

We mostly cook at home. There are almost no Japanese restaurants out here, and with small children, eating at home is simply easier. The kitchen is a little more usable than in a city-centre condominium, which helps. Our ingredients are mainly Chinese; Japanese ones we buy at the supermarket or bring from Japan. We make our own natto and miso. Japanese rice is sometimes cooked as it is, sometimes mixed with japonica rice. We bake bread too. Pork is sold in supermarkets, but not to our liking, so we order it by the kilo from a specialist online butcher.

A bag of Koshihikari rice with a halal certification mark — Koshihikari, with a halal mark. Even the king of rice carries the halal seal on the shelf in this country.

A shelf full of Japanese instant miso soup — Japanese miso soup fills the shelf. Ours is homemade, so I only look.

Fruit, fish and chicken we buy at a down-to-earth supermarket nearby, a halal shop frequented by Malay families. Cheap, fresh and delicious.

Let me define “premium supermarket” briefly. Not an old-money shop like those in Ginza, but a supermarket rich in imported food, with non-halal sections selling pork and alcohol, usually in city malls or affluent neighbourhoods. Prices are a notch above the everyday shops.

To be clear, I do not go to premium supermarkets to indulge. Living here as a foreigner, there are times you simply have to. Many foreigners go for pork, alcohol or seasonings from home. In my case, the targets are low-fat yoghurt and soy sauce, both hard to find in the everyday shops. I do not drink, so I walk straight past the wine. For foreigners, a premium supermarket is less a place of luxury than a supply depot. Near our home there is both a Village Grocer and a Jaya Grocer. The more I shopped, the more the business behind the shelves caught my interest.

Each format has its own king

First, the map. Malaysian grocery retail is clearly split by format.

Leaders by format: 99 Speedmart for cheapness, Lotus’s for size, AEON for range. Premium supermarkets barely appear on this map.

In supermarkets, AEON leads with 28%. In hypermarkets, Thai-owned Lotus’s has 42%. And among neighbourhood minimarts, 99 Speedmart has 53%, practically running alone. Cheapness, size, range: each yardstick has its own king.

A pile of pineapples tagged “Produce of Malaysia” — MD2 pineapples grown in Pekan Nanas, Johor. Besides MD2, Malaysia grows its own varieties such as Sarawak and Josapine. Among the imports, local produce holds its ground.

Not everything in a premium supermarket is imported, by the way. Pineapples, bananas and highland leafy greens are often local.

Premium supermarkets hardly show up on this map. In the numbers, they are a small corner. Yet that small corner is now where the highest prices are paid.

The premium two

Premium supermarkets are a two-horse race between Jaya Grocer and Village Grocer. Shares are not published, so compare store counts: Jaya Grocer has 55, Village Grocer 34. Village Grocer’s operator, The Food Purveyor (TFP), also runs B.I.G., the ultra-premium The Food Merchant and others, around 50 stores in all.

Store counts of the premium two. Both grew from a single store to around fifty.

Trays of 30 eggs under a Village Grocer price sign — Thirty eggs for RM15. That is 50 sen, about ¥20, an egg. Even at a premium supermarket, eggs are on the people’s side.

Stacks of 30-egg trays under the store’s own label — The stacked eggs are TFP’s own brand. Premium supermarkets also draw customers with daily eggs and earn margin on private labels.

Two families that began with a sundry shop

I was surprised by what I found: the two companies have walked almost the same road.

Jaya Grocer began in 1944, when the founding Teng family’s patriarch opened a small sundry shop in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur. The family went on to create Bangsar’s popular TMC and the supermarket chain Giant, both later sold to Hong Kong’s Dairy Farm. Then, in 2007, they opened the first Jaya Grocer in Petaling Jaya.

Village Grocer began in the 1950s with the Ong family’s neighbourhood sundry shop in Gombak. In 1997 they opened the everyday supermarket Pasaraya OTK, and in 2004, the premium Village Grocer in Bangsar Village.

Both started as family sundry shops and became premium supermarkets in the second or third generation. Much of Malaysian Chinese commerce takes this shape: learn your customers’ faces in a small shop, and as those customers prosper, let the shop stretch to grow with them.

A shelf of Japanese soy sauce, udon soup base, tonkatsu sauce and yakiniku sauce — The Japanese seasonings shelf. The sign “contains alcohol and pork, please check before purchase” is very much this country.

Yellow and red bananas hanging from a green stand — Yellow bananas and red bananas. The red ones are a familiar local variety known in Malay as pisang raja udang or pisang merah. Raja udang means kingfisher. In this country, even the bananas are multi-ethnic.

Through the funds, to an offer they could not refuse

The next stage is also alike. Mid-growth, a private equity fund comes in: Navis Capital into Village Grocer in 2014, AIGF into Jaya Grocer in 2016. Fund money adds stores and systems, and finally the fund looks for a buyer.

In The Godfather, there is the line: I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse. What reached both companies was exactly that kind of offer.

Revenue, and the price paid: 1.3 to 1.4 times revenue. Expensive or cheap depends on what the buyer got.

Jaya Grocer was bought by Grab, the Singapore-based ride-hailing app, in 2022, for a reported up to RM1.8 billion. TFP, including Village Grocer, was bought by CP Axtra, the Thai CP Group company that runs Lotus’s, for RM1.6 billion, completed in September 2026.

In other words, buy an egg at a Malaysian premium supermarket and part of your money flows to Grab, and part to a Thai conglomerate. The far side of the till is far more international than you might think.

Why do non-supermarkets buy supermarkets?

So why would a ride-hailing app and a hypermarket operator go out of their way to buy premium supermarkets? Through a business lens, the reasons are clear.

What Grab wanted was less the stores than fresh inventory and delivery points. Delivering vegetables and meat ordered online from a nearby store within 30 minutes needs refrigerated warehouses in town. A premium supermarket comes with exactly that. Jaya Grocer’s RM100 million automated warehouse in 2025 sits on the same line.

What CP Axtra wanted was location and customers. Giant hypermarkets can be built on large suburban plots, but cannot get into city-centre malls or affluent neighbourhoods. Premium supermarkets are already there, and their customers choose on quality rather than price.

Netted oranges and lemons under a sign promising quality or a refund — “Quality assured or we’ll refund you.” This confident sign is a greeting to customers who choose on quality, not price.

A non-halal section entrance with a pork-cuts diagram on the wall — The non-halal section. Pork and alcohol are sold in a separate room. Behind this door is the premium supermarket’s main earner.

Packs of pork for shabu-shabu under a “we’ll prepare your meat for you” sign — Pork for shabu-shabu. “We’ll prepare your meat for you. Just ask.” The Chinese labels also tell you who the customers are.

And one more thing. A premium supermarket’s main earner is in the non-halal room: pork, wine, imported cheese. In a Muslim-majority country, few shops stock these properly. Much of the reason Chinese and foreign customers choose premium supermarkets lies behind that door.

The entrance to a wine and liquor shop — Mops and sponges at the entrance to the liquor shop. They have even thought about the cleaning up afterwards.

A business view

Given my line of work, here are three lessons.

First, a small corner can sell for more than its size suggests. Premium supermarkets, unremarkable by share, were bought at 1.3 to 1.4 times revenue. What the buyers got was not revenue, but locations and customers they could not get elsewhere.

Second, the shape of a family business exit: build it as a family, grow it with a fund, and finally sell it to a large company that needs to cover its weak spot. The Tengs and the Ongs chose the same road. It is a script Japanese family businesses could use for succession.

Third, a shop floor wears the face of its country. Separate halal and non-halal by room, write prices in Malay, English and Chinese, and put Japanese miso and South African lemons in the same aisle. If you want to do business in a multi-ethnic country, start by learning how to lay out a shop floor.

Bagged red and green apples under a sign promising the best picks — “We strive to pick the best for you.” The apples in the bags come from New Zealand and South Africa.

A pile of Fuji apples and pears — Chinese Fuji apples and South African pears. The fruit section is a small world map. I only look; I buy fruit at the everyday shop.

Supermarket Gaspard

In Juzo Itami’s film Supermarket Woman, a housewife played by Nobuko Miyamoto turns around a failing supermarket through a housewife’s eyes. Look at the shop floor and you understand how the store is run. Customers are watching.

I too watch the shop floor, as one customer who comes from a suburban kitchen. I look at the price of eggs and the size of the pork room, and behind them I see Grab, a Thai conglomerate and eighty years of two families’ history. The basket is light, but the thinking is heavy.

A wide football field in the evening with a child near a goal — The football field near home. Back from shopping, I kick a ball with the children here. The greatest luxury of suburban life.

Mind you, all I bring home is low-fat yoghurt, soy sauce and whatever is on the discount shelf by the entrance. Fruit, fish and chicken come from the everyday shop, and natto and miso we make at home. For a premium supermarket, I am probably not a very profitable customer.