Livehouse.in, Taiwan’s popular live media streaming website, nets $1.3M in additional funding

That was fast – just two months after scoring US$350,000 from Cherubic Ventures, iKala, the parent company behind Taiwan’s Livehouse.in, has announced it closed an additional US$1.3 million round of funding. Cherubic Ventures is participating in the round along with Gamania, a local gaming firm that is listed on Taiwan’s stock exchange. According to Cherubic, the investment values the startup at US$13 million.

Livehouse.in is very similar to Twitch, the live broadcasting website that Amazon acquired in August 2014. Users can create channels and record themselves doing whatever they please, in an effort to reach an audience. Viewers can also follow channels and communicate with the broadcasters through a chat box that sits next to the media player.

The website earned some notoriety last year as one of the main publicity channels for mayor-elect Ko Wen-Je, who won a sweeping victory against his Kuomintang-backed opponent in Taipei’s mayoral election. Beyond that, Livehouse.in has also worked with bands and celebrities to broadcast virtual fan meetups. It also has launched promotional giveaway broadcasts with UDN Shopping, an ecommerce site run by United Daily News, and is even in the midst of airing a Truman Show-esque reality series.

While Livehouse.in hasn’t committed to a single monetization model beyond advertising, Gamania’s investment points to one unsurprising direction – gaming. The company has subsidiaries all over East Asia where it distributes and publishes games to different markets. When one considers how Twitch matured from a “broadcast your life” website to a community of hardcore gamers, it seems plausible that Gamania could help Livehouse evolve in this direction as well. But competition in video streaming remains fierce. Twitch and Youtube look set to keep a firm grip on international markets while Chinese video streamers will likely stay put in their home market. Media is often an extremely localized industry, so Livehouse.in’s growing popularity in Taiwan might not necessarily extend beyond the island.

Livehouse.in claims to have broadcast “over 100,000” live shows since is inception in early 2014. The company is currently preparing to raise a full series A round.