East Ventures invests in startup that wants to blend content with tech

Asumsi, a digital media startup based in Indonesia, said that it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from East Ventures.

Asumsi team / Photo credit: Asumsi

Founded in 2017 by Pangeran Siahaan, a journalist and former TV presenter, Asumsi targets the youth and specializes in current affairs and pop culture. It publishes articles and releases videos on its own website as well as through YouTube and social media.

Asumsi plans to use the new funds to hire more engineers and build tech infrastructure.

Siahaan thinks that Indonesia already has enough news companies that produce content, so that’s not the focus of his company. Instead, Asumsi is developing a news aggregator app that gives users recommendations on what to read and watch.

The startup’s main goal is to “approach the media business from a tech perspective” and to “enable other people to build content,” Siahaan tells Tech in Asia.

What problem is it solving? Siahaan believes there isn’t enough room in Indonesia’s media industry for deeper stories, long-form journalism, and compelling videos. This drove him to establish Asumsi, but it didn’t take long before he realized that producing better content only solves part of the problem.

“The media industry has grown in recent years, but its revenue model still depends on advertising,” Siahaan says.

He admits that it’s a proven model that works well for Asumsi, which still gets the majority of its revenue from ad placements. However, depending on advertising doesn’t make him feel secure about the business. That’s why he wants to find the best model that will allow Asumsi to monetize from its audience. Apart from the news aggregator platform, there are also plans to make a news gamification feature.

How much traction has it gotten? Asumsi claims it reaches more than 10 million viewers per month through its website, YouTube, and social media platforms.

Its revenue is still increasing amid Covid-19 pandemic, according to Siahaan. Since offline gatherings are still prohibited in Indonesia, advertisers are looking for online avenues, such as webinars and storytelling content.

“We had a technical problem in the first months [of the pandemic] because we couldn’t record video on the ground. However, we adapted by creating the video from our homes,” Siahaan says.

What are the opportunities? According to 2019 PubMatic report, Indonesia is one of the fastest-growing markets for digital advertising worldwide. It was estimated to grow by 26% to US$2.6 billion last year.

A Google and Temasek report also said that Indonesia’s online media sector, including games and video subscriptions, could reach US$4 billion in 2019 and may increase to US$9 billion by 2025.