Bags Pre-Initial Funding, Local NFT Marketplace ‘Artpedia’ Launching Soon

Aiming to provide more options for Indonesians who want to sell their art in the form of NFT (Non-Fungible Token), the Artpedia platform will launch in beta in July.

Artpedia’s Founder & CEO Arjuna Sky Kok revealed, although currently in Indonesia the NFT market is still relatively niche, but through Artpedia, it is hoped that global creators can also use their platform to transact.

The choice of Ethereum L2s as their settlement is expected to make it easier for people to sell their art through Artpedia. Arjuna claims, Etherium is the most widely used technology by NFT users globally.

“At first glance, the concept of Artpedia is similar to OpenSea, but Artpedia has a different value proposition from OpenSea. Apart from Indonesia, Artpedia can also be used by the global market,” said Arjuna.

The Company’s Plan with the Funding

To accelerate business growth, Artpedia has secured pre-early funding from a number of angel investors with an investment value of $100 thousand or the equivalent of 1.5 billion Rupiah.

Some of the investors involved include Windy Natriavi, (Co-founder of AwanTunai), Jim Geovedi (CTO of Koinworks), Dendi Suhubdy (CEO of Bitwyre), and Indira Widjonarko (Founder of Sebangsa).

The fresh funds are used by the company to develop technology. Later when the platform has been launched, they have plans to raise funds for the seed stage — planned this year.

“We also have plans to develop technology and recruit new talent to build an on-ramp company that will later be able to manage payment options using e-wallet and others. With fresh funds from the seed round, we hope that the plan can be rolled out,” said Arjuna.

Besides Artpedia, which offers similar services and targets NFT is TokoMall from Tokocrypto. It presents the concept of digital meets reality.

Arts and digital platforms in NFT form can be the answer to real-world problems. By switching to NFT and making it mainstream, local creators can not only market their work to a wider market.

Business Model and Monetization Strategy

For creators who want to take advantage of Artpedia’s services, they can use the wallet they already have. For those who don’t have a wallet yet, the platform offers a custodial option.

All uploads to payments are managed by Artpedia. Creators only need to provide a phone number and bank account, to get royalties every month, for those who want to sell art through Artpedia.

“For the monetization strategy, the market fee is a market fee, to the creator. For this custodial option, Artpedia does not charge an additional fee to the creator. This custodial option is a temporary solution that we offer, for creators who do not have a wallet,” said Arjuna.

Although for the initial phase they still focus on artwork in the form of images, in the future they also want to make Artpedia a ‘token gate’ for various communities. Is it a yoga community, diving, and others. NFT in the form of a certificate can later be an option for the community to start.

“We see the value as being more collectible. But in the future we want Artpedia to be more than just collectible. To be able to target the metaverse world, we also plan to give designers the opportunity to design clothes which they can then sell to users in the metaverse world,” said Arjuna.

With a fairly solid relationship with several communities, it is hoped that when the platform launches next month, NFT creators will be able to directly obtain them.

“Specifically, we target millennials, because we see that they are very open to NFT. Unlike Gen Z, we see that they are not very interested in playing NFT,” said Arjuna.