News aggregator for Indonesia raises $20m from Bertelsmann, others

Baca, a news reader app for Indonesia, just announced that it’s secured a series B investment from Bertelsmann Asia Investment (BAI), Crystal Stream, and CC Zhuang.

Baca COO Jimmy Sie says it’s more than US$20 million.

As a news aggregator, Baca monetizes through ads that are served alongside the content. “We place the apps at the end of an article,” Jimmy says.

At this point, Baca claims to have one million daily active users in Indonesia. Each day the app collects between 20,000 to 25,000 articles from 500 publications. Baca analyzes which news get read by app users, and serves them more content based on those preferences.

News in Palm – the name of Baca’s parent company – has a base in Hong Kong but sees itself as a global operation. It deploys local teams in the countries it enters. After Indonesia, the team now wants to go after another massive market, Brazil. It launched there under the name Central das Noticias in March. Other countries are on the roadmap.

In Indonesia, Baca competes with news aggregators like BaBe and Kurio. Baca says its advantage is that it doesn’t require users to log in and create an account, and it’s very economical in data usage.

Tech in Asia reached out to BAI for comment. To our knowledge, Baca would be BAI’s first investment for the Indonesian market. Beijing-based BAI’s investments have been focused on China in the past.