Indonesian live streaming startup Zeemi goes on hiatus ahead of pivot

Photo credit: Shots of Carmen Fiano.

Zeemi, an Indonesia-based live streaming startup created by a former Rocket Internet exec, is going offline indefinitely, it says in a notice on its site today.

Its app will no longer be accessible soon. Some content is still available on its website, but starting new streams is no longer possible.

The company’s founder, Thomas Damek, tells Tech in Asia that they’ve let go of some staff as a result of the decision.

Zeemi will be changing its business model, he adds, but he’s keeping the company’s plans under wraps for now.

This was a tough decision.

“It will not be viable as a standalone, video live-streaming player in the long term,” Damek says. “This was clearly a tough decision but we believe it to be in the best interest of the company and we have taken it now while we have money to make a number of changes.”

Damek, the former CEO of Lazada Indonesia, started Zeemi in 2014 with the goal to make it Indonesia’s first online stage for creating, watching, and interacting with live entertainment content.

The company last year grabbed US$1 million in seed funding from Japanese DeNA’s venture arm, and Silicon Valley VC firm 500 Startups.

How it works is simple: once on the site, visitors may choose from a handful of popular channels and see which ones are streaming live at any given moment. After selecting a channel of interest, users can send messages to the live performers in a chatroom-style message box to ask questions or make requests about specific content.

Yet for it to work, Damek admits “will require a much bigger fan base than we can generate.”

“We will focus on new ways to bring our technology to audiences – I will update you on what that means specifically, soon.”