VideoSelfie focuses on Southeast Asia with Android release, new investors, local celebs

Last November, Tokyo-based startup Pocket Supernova launched its VideoSelfie app for iOS. The app brings real-time editing, GIFs, filters, and a host of other features to the popular video creation space and combines it with the cultural phenomenon known as the selfie. Just three and a half months later, co-founder and CEO Oscar Noriega tells Tech in Asia that the app has launched for Android – with the backing of two new investors.

VideoSelfie – the winner of Tech in Asia’s first Tokyo meetup and pitch contest (also last November) – was awarded with flights, event passes, and a booth at Startup Asia Jakarta. Noriega explains how the event sprung his team into action on the development of an Android app.

“Today’s release is all about Southeast Asia, where Android is the dominant mobile platform with about 80 percent market penetration,” he says. “If you’re not on Android, you’re out of the equation. In Jakarta, we were approached by two new investors who basically said ‘you need to bring this to Southeast Asia but it has to be on Android and it has to support lower-end devices.’”

VideoSelfie for Android hit the Google Play store overnight. That launch also coincides with an iOS update that brings several new features to the app, all of which will be available across both platforms.

“Our users demanded having a profile page as a kind of social layer for interacting with more and more users,” Noriega says. “This new layer allows you to follow people you like, comment on videos, like videos, and repost videos on your own timeline. If you follow someone and they follow you back, you become friends within the app.”

There are also tweaks to how users share, discover, and shoot videos. Noriega says that you can now share to multiple services with one tap thanks to improved APIs for iOS and Android. There’s also an interactive map function that allows users to discover trending VideoSelfies from around the world in real time, in addition to four new video filters bundled into the update.

Focusing on SEA

Pocket Supernova raised a total of US$1.2 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, CyberAgent, East Ventures (Disclosure: East Ventures also invests in Tech in Asia. See our ethics page), Klab Ventures, and angels. Two new investors have entered the fold to help VideoSelfie realize its full potential in Southeast Asia.

The first, East Ventures, might sound like a repeat. However, existing funding came from the VC’s Japanese fund. In Jakarta, Noriega was able to secure additional funding from East Ventures’ SEA fund, after a meeting with managing partner Wilson Cuaca.

“[Cuaca] said he wanted to support us in the region, but that his only condition was to bring [VideoSelfie] to Android as soon as possible,” Noriega says.

The second investor is serial entrepreneur and angel Edgar Chiu, hailing from Taiwan. Chiu is the ex-COO of Gogolook, the Taiwanese startup behind Whoscall, which was acquired by Naver in December 2013. Currently serving as the country manager for Camp Mobile Taiwan, Chiu also insisted on an Android release.