Asumsi announced US$ 700,000 of funding from East Ventures

Asumsi, a multi-platform digital media company, announced that it has secured US$ 700,000 (approximately IDR 10 billion) of funding from East Ventures. The investment aims to further expand Asumsi’s media operation and escalate the engineering team to create a more interactive platform.

“We are very grateful and excited to have continuous support from East Ventures in our journey to create and publish stories to the Indonesian audience. The pandemic posed a different challenge to the media business and we’ve become more resilient to adjust and adapt to industry dynamics,” said Pangeran Siahaan, CEO of Asumsi.

Leveraging its content production and storytelling skills, Asumsi is able to respond to the public need in getting quality content and capture the market potential. An uptick in digital media consumption amidst COVID-19 pandemic showed that digital media have proven more attractive to audiences and advertisers. According to the GWI report in 2020, people are increasingly watching “TV” content via streaming apps on their mobile devices. It reflects the huge potential in the media market, which is expected to grow from $1,713 billion in 2020 to $2,670.7 billion in 2025 globally.

With the new fund, Asumsi is targeting to launch a live streaming platform by mid 2022. The platform is easily customized to tailor the needs of the streamer, and audiences can access interactive features such as tipping, Q&A, and quiz maker. The platform is intended to be available for public use.

“As a media company whose main products are videos, we realize that there is a limitation when it comes to audience interaction, especially on live streaming service. Our live streaming platform enables Asumsi to enhance community engagement in the public sphere,” said Pangeran.

Moreover, Asumsi aims to add two coverage focuses, namely Sports and Lifestyle, complementing the current content on politics and social issues. The two topics are chosen to expand the audience base and increase commercial opportunities. Indonesia is a sports-crazy nation while lifestyle and pop culture have been a regular theme in the new media landscape.

With a mission to create a sustainable media ecosystem, Asumsi focuses on providing stand-out and unorthodox content in multi-format from video, articles, podcast, newsletter, to bite-sized content on social media. This approach makes Asumsi distinct from its competitors in the media space. Asumsi’s revenue has grown 10 times (year-on-year) since the last funding round, which was also led by East Ventures, with over 10,000,000 audiences per month in all platforms. On the marketing and advertising side, Asumsi has worked with around 50 prominent advertisers from corporates, Non-government organizations (NGOs), and state enterprises.

“Asumsi keeps growing to provide quality stories to Indonesians. We believe that the innovations in journalism from Pangeran and Asumsi team will create greater space for diversity and democracy in Indonesia,” said Willson Cuaca Co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures.