2/11/2018 – Nusantara Technology, a Jakarta-based media startup has raised an undisclosed Series A funding led by Indonesia-focused venture capital firm Alpha JWC Ventures, alongside the participation of Singapore-based Insignia Ventures.
Led by CEO Steven Wongsoredjo, Nusantara Technology is a technology and media group created by Indonesians for the younger generation. It is the company behind millennial-focused media platforms Yukepo.com and Keepo.me, as well as interactive content marketing platform PlayingViral.
The startup believes that the youthful Indonesian generation has the potential to make a positive impact on Indonesia, and therefore aims to shape the mentality of the next generation by providing content and technology that will bring Indonesia to the forefront of innovation.
Nusantara Technology first started with Yukepo and Keepo, which they claimed to have been profitable before continuously deciding to enter the tech space with the launch of PlayingViral.
According to Wongsoredjo, Yukepo and Keepo now see a total of 10 to 15 million monthly visitors.
“My co-founders and I saw that if we ever wanted to be a billion-dollar company, we cannot rely solely on media businesses. We need to create a scalable tech product,” said Wongsoredjo.
PlayingViral is thus developed as a marketing tool for businesses to use personalized, interactive content to grab the attention of users. A property developer, for example, had used PlayingViral to create a survey that tells users what kind of house they can afford based on their income level and location.
Besides, there are more than hundreds of dialects spoken in Indonesia and PlayingViral is capable of adapting content to different languages relying on machine-learning algorithms. It also analyzes different metrics including what combination of keywords, graphics, and colors get the most engagement, further helping brands to refine their marketing strategies.
“In the long term, we want to be a cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that can solve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) problems with our end-to-end digital tools, and expand globally as well,” he added.
Nusantara Technology serves many small businesses in the beauty and property sectors, in addition to counting big corporation like Singapore Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, and Nokia as its clients.
It the second Indonesian company accepted into the Y Combinator program, after bill payment platform Payfazz. Currently, with the funding, Nusantara Technology is looking to diversify and deepen its platform by expanding to Southeast Asia, starting with Thailand.
