Audio On-Demand Noice Platform Targets Close Funding Round in Second Quarter 2021

Audio platforms on-demand Noice has received initial funding from a number of investors, namely Capital Memories, Alpha JWC, and Kinesys Group. This investment will be used to boost Noice's local content and technology development this year. The value of the investment itself is not stated.

In his interview with DailySocial, President Director of Mahaka Radio Adrian Sykawie revealed that there is one more investor, claimed to be a startup unicorn, which will go into this funding. According to him, the unicorn's involvement will provide opportunities for synergies between the two companies and greater technology transfer. "I can't yet announce his name. We will push [closing] in the second quarter," said Adrian.

Noice was originally developed as a platform streaming radio. However, according to Adrian, this service is considered insufficient to meet the needs of a growing market. While content on-demand growing rapidly in a number of countries, including Indonesia.

"If only from streaming radio course, it seems [less] for digital applications. Moreover, people can still hear radio from other media. So, we looked ahead to what would be interesting to consumers through this application, and so we went into content podcast," he told DailySocial.

With PT Mahaka Radio Integra Tbk (MARI)'s strong position in the radio business, the company was formed j with PT Quatro Kreasi Indonesia to establish PT Mahaka Radio Digital which houses Noice. Quatro is a consortium of four recording companies in Indonesia, including Musica, Aquarius, My Music, and Trinity.

This consortium, said Adrian, was formed from the common vision of each music label owner to develop an application that focuses on local sound-based content.

Investors who provide support in technology

This year, Noice will focus on application platform development and content localization. These two things had not previously been the company's main focus considering that Mahaka Radio Integra's main business was producing content. Adrian also said that the Noice platform was not optimal from a technological perspective because at that time it was developed by a third party.

"We're not tech company. However, we are aware that in the future we cannot develop from content alone, but also from technology. From here, we have two concern, namely content and technology. Because Mahaka Radio Integra and Quatro are strong in content, we are trying to find investors who can provide it support in technology," said Adrian to DailySocial.

Memories of Capital constitute angel funds owned by Co-founder and CEO of Kopi Kenangan Edward Tirtanata who focuses on the portfolio in consumertech. Kopi Kenangan is also part of the Alpha JWC portfolio. Meanwhile, Kinesys Group focuses on funding early stage startups.

"Currently, investors have not yet entered as shareholders because [the investment] is still in form convertible loans, later it will be converted to equity. We are indeed looking for partners who can provide guidance from a technology and collaboration perspective. For example, investors invest in other portfolios, this can be synergized with Noice. "We are doing it in stages because we are focusing on strengthening the content," he explained.

With the involvement of these investors, Noice has added resource The new one will focus on the technology side. The company formed a special team from India to develop the Noice platform internally in the future.

Roadmap business 2021

Furthermore, Adrian said that the focus on Noice technology development is divided into three phases. First, the launch of the Noice 2.0 beta platform with a new UI/UX this March. Second, the company will launch version 2.X of the Noice platform next May. In this phase, Noice is starting to get into the types of content it can open platform aka content that can be uploaded yourself or personalized content. Third, Noice will start monetizing, both with advertising and subscription schemes.

With the development of this platform, the company began to increase the amount of content podcast this year with a content target of reaching 4.000-5.000 episodes. As of December, Noice had more than 3.000 episodes podcast, 62 content titles podcast, and contracted as many as 80 podcasts.

According to Adrian, currently entertainment content, especially comedy and horror, is still the most popular genre in Indonesia. However, Noice will continue to expand content in the future to various categories, such as education and business. "We produce 95% of the content on Noice ourselves. We contract it podcasts exclusively. We brainstormed the idea and... podcasts who executes the content," he explained.

For now, Noice content can still be accessed for free by users. New monetization will be discussed if user base, monthly active users (WANT), and time spend increase. The target, Noice is aiming for an increase user base to four times its current position, total play up to eight times as much, and the amount of exclusive original content up to twice as much.

"Currently we are not focusing on monetization because the Indonesian market still has resistance when it comes to the subscription system. Of course we will start to increase the advertising and subscription scheme in the future, perhaps later in the third stage."

Based on Spotify data, Indonesia dominates consumption podcast Most in Southeast Asia in 2020. As many as 20% of the total Spotify users in Indonesia listen podcast every month, and that number is higher than the global average percentage.