Popsical bags $5m to bring a ‘Spotify for karaoke’ to Southeast Asia

A lot of Asians are obsessed with karaoke, so it’s not surprising that the karaoke market is expected to grow by almost 3% every year to become worth US$5.7 billion by 2024.

Singapore-based Popsical is eyeing a slice of the pie by delivering a Spotify-like approach to this go-to recreational activity.

Recently, it announced closing a S$6.9 million (or nearly US$5 million) series A round led by Quest Ventures. Seeds Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, also participated in the round alongside early investors Apricot Capital, Teo Heng KTV, Cash Studios KTV, OMG Ventures, and Mediacorp.

As part of the deal, Quest Ventures partner Jeffrey Seah will be joining Popsical’s board of directors, according to a statement.

The Popsical team / Photo credit: Popsical

Founded in 2016, Popsical aims to make the user experience for karaoke as smooth as possible. Its cloud-based Popsical Remix system offers a self-updating library of over 200,000 songs in 14 languages. The device itself is also compact, removing the need for people to use numerous and complicated technical equipment.

The startup said it will use the new funds to boost its digital capabilities, expand to new markets, hire go-to-market talent, and develop a roadmap for other products and SaaS services.

What problem is it solving? “We think that karaoke is outdated,” Popsical co-founder and CEO Faruq Marican told Tech in Asia, noting that traditional systems are usually prohibitively expensive and poorly designed, hardware- and user experience-wise.

“We figured this is why KTVs are still going strong while video game arcades largely disappeared. There was never a ‘karaoke PlayStation,'” the chief exec said. Other services such as Joox or Smule try to emulate the experience through apps, but the experience is not the same, he added.

With Popsical Remix, both mixer and device are combined into one palm-sized system. It also comes with two wireless microphones.

What’s the opportunity? Citing a 360 Research report, the company said karaoke’s popularity has boosted the market’s value to US$4.2 billion globally in 2020.

To date, the startup has sold over 12,000 of its Remix system, which costs S$499 apiece. Content is available on its platforms with a 24-hour subscription package at S$4.99 or a monthly fee of S$10.90 after a free one-month trial period.

“As big as the market was for karaoke devices, it’s still probably a fraction of what we can address with the Popsical Remix and offerings to come,” said Marican. He shared that they are still developing newer hardware to deliver gamified and livestreaming karaoke experiences.

What are its challenges? In order to maximize the opportunity, Marican said they have to control the entire experience by building on all levels of the stack. That includes software development, content acquisition, and the combination of hardware design and manufacturing, which the company considers as the most difficult part of the process.