Oomph, Indonesia’s answer to Google Play, grabs seed funding

Android app store Oomph, which is like a Google Play alternative for Indonesia, announced today that it has secured a round of seed funding of an undisclosed amount. The startup says it will use the funds to strengthen the team and expedite growth.

The investment is from Japan-based IMJ Investment Partners.

Oomph is aimed at the growing number of Android smartphone users in Indonesia. It has apps, games, wallpaper, music, and more. Users can pay for their downloads via prepaid mobile credit, commonly referred to as “pulsa” in Indonesian. That’s something Google Play doesn’t offer in Indonesia. Oomph is also more localized than Google Play with its language and content.

In October, Oomph’s co-founder and director Stanley Tan told Tech in Asia that the store had 4.5 million users in Indonesia. Today, Yasuhiro Seo, general manager for IMJ Investment Partners says Oomph now has 6 million users.

Seo did not comment on user activity, but Oomph’s daily user activity rate was around five percent in October, according to Tan. 48 percent of registered users were active monthly, and 78 percent were active quarterly. He also mentioned Oomph was getting more than 10,000 new users per day, and believes his product is on track to reach 10 million users by the end of this year.

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“Now it’s in the stage to push up the existing good retention rate […] by implementing a variety of plans and features,” says Seo. “One of Oomph’s plans is also to push up the quality of its content. […] With our extensive network and portfolios, IMJ will help Oomph to connect with various content owners.” He adds that his firm will also help Oomph gather more hot content from outside Indonesia.

Oomph competes with some other alternative app stores in Indonesia, like Baidu’s MoboMarket and XL Axiata’s Gudang App.

Seo says that IMJ Investment Partners has been particularly impressed by the experience of Oomph’s co-founders. Tan says they’ve been in the mobile content business for 17 years – 11 of which have been spent in Indonesia, which makes them seasoned veterans in Jakarta.

(Update 3/2/15: Local telco Indosat has actually been running carrier billing since December. The line about users not being able to pay for Google Play with prepaid mobile credit is now out of date.)