Gojek Reportedly Injects Funds to Podcast Startup Noice

Indonesian podcast site NOICE, operated by registered radio company PT Mahaka Radio Integra Tbk (MARI), announced a Pre-Series A funding round from Alpha JWC Ventures and Go-Ventures.

Mahaka is a company founded by the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Erick Thohir. This fresh injection of funds demonstrates confidence in NOICE’s business plan and potential. 

Other venture capital firms including Kinesys Group, Kenangan Fund, and several angel investors also participated in this funding. The funding value for the startup created by Erick Thohir is reportedly seven-digit United States (US) dollars. 

NOICE’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Rado Ardian said, this new investment will focus on three main areas. First, Technology Development, in particular the new live audio feature, NOICE Live, which is expected to be launched soon. 

Second, more Native Content Development. As well as the third, recruiting talent across the region. “To produce more original shows and recruit workers,” Noice said as quoted by Tech In Asia, Monday (6/9).

Noice also plans to add more features to the platform. One of them is Noice Live, which allows real-time community interaction.

While Noice provides several features such as radio streaming, audiobooks, and a library of more than 100 original audio shows. It has 800k registered listeners. Recently, the startup created by Erick Thohir surpassed 1 billion minutes of audio broadcast on the platform.

The Noice platform is managed by Mahaka Digital Innovation (MDI), a MARI subsidiary that focuses on digital radio, music, and podcast businesses. 

This company has appointed Niken Sasmaya and Rado Ardian, former Google executives, as chief business officer and chief executive officer last month. 

Noice Users in Indonesia

Launched in 2018, NOICE has reached 800,000 registered listeners throughout Indonesia. NOICE has become the largest podcast network in Indonesia, with 100+ original shows, including streaming radio audiobooks.

The platform drives high engagement, allowing content creators to interact directly with their fans. As of quarter III-2021, NOICE has recorded more than 1 billion minutes that users have spent listening to audio content on the platform.

This shows the high interest and consumption of audio content listened to on the NOICE platform. NOICE users are quite loyal. Both to the programs presented on this platform and to the creators.

This makes the future of the audio creator and media economy very promising. NOICE users not only listen to more content, but the number of users has also increased significantly by 144 percent over the past year.

SVP of Investments, Go-Ventures, Aditya Kumar said digital content consumption is growing in Indonesia. As more and more people work, study and be entertained at home, the demand for quality content is increasing exponentially.

“NOICE is well-positioned to address this unmet need, to become the leading audio platform in Indonesia,” said Aditya.

Other Investors Also Inject Funds into Noice

Erick Thohir was also reported to have invited former Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy Wishnutama Kusubandio to develop the Noice podcast application.

“The Noice business will be managed by former Tourism Minister Wishnutama Kusubandio,” said a source. Meanwhile, Go-Ventures from Gojek has injected capital into a number of startups such as KitaBeli and eFishery.

This venture capital also supports overseas start-ups such as Mall91 from India and Vietcetera, Vietnam. Dealstreetasia reports that Go-Ventures from Gojek targets to provide funding of up to US$ 100 million through 17 investments per first quarter.

Gojek’s investor, Northstar Pacific, was also reported to have injected Noice’s capital. Northstar Group is a fund management company or private equity firm that was founded in 2003.

In addition to Gojek, Grab has venture capital namely Grab Ventures. Earlier this year, Grab collaborated with venture capital BRI Ventures to launch the Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV) acceleration program batch 4 x Sembrani Wira.

This time, Gojek’s competitor is targeting post-seed startups engaged in the digitization sector for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).