500 Startups enters Myanmar, invests in mobile news aggregation startup Bindez

The Bindez team with 500 Startups managing director Khailee Ng.

500 Startups has injected an undisclosed amount into Myanmar’s mobile news aggregation startup Bindez, marking the Silicon Valley venture capital firm’s first investment in the once-isolated country.

Bindez, which goes by the tagline “making information easy,” developed an Android app called Tha Din, which brings users the latest Burmese language news from Myanmar.

Currently in beta, the app has 75,000 downloads so far and more than 20,000 monthly active users. It’s looking to shore up these figures after bagging partnerships with telecom provider Ooredoo, device manufacturers, distributors, and content hubs.

Co-founder and CEO Rahul Batra says 500 Startups invested in the company’s third round of funding, along with a consortium of angel investors “across Asia’s tech industry.”

“It’s been an incredible experience through a year of networking, pitching, evaluation, analysis, and negotiations in raising the capital that should help us grow our team, product offering, and value over the next 12 to 18 months,” he explains.

This pre-series A round brings Bindez’s funding to more than US$500,000 over the last 1.5 years.

Mobile internet explosion

500 Startups couldn’t be entering Myanmar at a better time. The economy was virtually closed until just a few years ago, when its brutal military dictatorship collapsed. The only telco operator used to be state-owned MPT (Myanma Posts and Telecommunications), which charged a whopping US$250 for a SIM card. But ever since it opened up, cellular connections and the internet have exploded in Myanmar. Two more telcos – Telenor of Norway and Ooredoo of Qatar – entered the market, enabling cheap, data-ready SIMs and phones.

What’s interesting is that the Burmese are going straight to smartphones. For them, smartphones are not just cellular phones, but the link to the internet. And when you talk internet, the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook.

Facebook is the primary source of news and information in Myanmar. Publishers often post news updates and picture stories directly on Facebook, with no link to their homepage.

500 Startups managing partner Khailee Ng believes Bindez can take on the social network behemoth. “We see Bindez offering a locally developed, alternative way of consuming real-time, relevant information,” he explains.

Bindez is actually an acronym for Burmese Index, a name that represents the early efforts of what used to be a local language search engine project by two Burmese techies Ye Wint Ko and Htet Will in 2013. Bootstrapping through their early months, Ye Wint, who was working a day job in Singapore, and Htet, who just finished college in Yangon, met an enthusiastic mentor in Indian-born Rahul. Rahul was a Googler for 5.5 years, working various roles in the tech giant’s India, Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific, and US operations. In his last role, he was leading India-based efforts of bringing Google’s online business solutions to millions of small and medium businesses.

Rahul’s team is working to further increase Bindez’s reach, as well as user engagement on the platform. That’s the focus for now, he says. Monetization will come later. “We’ll leverage tech, product, and trends for revenue models soon,” he adds.