GoPlay wants expand locally sourced content options for creators and viewers
Business have been gravitating towards the superapp business model, which involves diversifying into multiple mostly-digital operations that may not be connected.
Southeast Asia, in particular, has a robust superapp ecosystem with players such as Grab, Alipay and Meituan Dianping, as well as Gojek in the arena.
One of the biggest drivers for this trend is that individual streams may often not be profitable, as food delivery has shown. Diversifying the business is seen as a viable way of bringing in revenues in a competitive, unicorn-dominated space while offsetting overall business risk.
Moreover, the $100 billion Southeast Asian Internet economy provides additional impetus for growth in this sphere, characterized by countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam that have sizable domestic markets and are mobile-first.
In this context, Indonesian superapp Gojek has made not one but two major funding announcements this month, the latest of which is a funding round for its subsidiary, GoPlay.
The unicorn’s on-demand video platform GoPlay has closed its first independent round of financing for an undisclosed amount, the startup announced in a statement today.
The round was led by Southeast Asian venture capital firms ZWC Partners and Golden Gate Ventures. While ZWC Partners recently invested in 4Paradigm, which raised a large round in April, Golden Gate Venture’s portfolio includes popular American unicorn Stripe.
Openspace Ventures, Ideosource Entertainment, and Redbadge Pacific also pitched in, the statement noted.
GoPlay CEO Edy Sulistyo said in the statement that GoPlay addresses the growing needs of Indonesia’s entertainment industry, with Indonesian creators looking to share their content on more platforms, and the archipelago’s mobile-first population wanting more local content.
“We see great potential that cannot be fulfilled by the cinema industry, and we are working hard to be able to close the gap between the needs and availability of quality content through technology,” Sulistyo continued.
Launched in late 2019, the platform hosts locally produced films and television shows that reach a broad audience in Indonesia, the statement said. The funding will be used to enhance GoPlay’s technology, it added.
“By combining our years of experience in the media and technology sector, the Gojek technology ecosystem, and the capabilities of the GoPlay team, we believe that GoPlay can accelerate its growth exponentially,” ZWC Partners Founding and Managing Partner Patrick Cheung said in the statement.
According to CEO of Ideosource Entertainment (NFCX subsidiary) Andi Boediman, the Indonesian content market could well reach $1 million in size in the next three years.
This presents a significant opportunity for GoPlay as a segment of Gojek’s on-demand services ecosystem, which evolved from transportation to digital payments, food delivery, logistics, and more.
The superapp had announced earlier this month that Facebook and PayPal would be joining its existing backers Google and Tencent, with an undisclosed amount of funding in its ongoing Series F.
The company has raised $4.5 billion in funding so far. The fresh capital will be focused mainly on Gojek’s payments division, a statement from the company said.
Earlier this year, the startup had earlier raised $1.2 billion for expansion In the second tranche of its Series F that took place in March. The round was one of the biggest fundraises to take place in the first quarter of 2020, which was marked by economic downturns due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Header image by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash
