Armed with a team of 130 employees, Kumparan believes that the future of journalism lies in the hand of user-generated contents

When Kumparan was launched in the end of January 2017, the Indonesian social media landscape was rife with conversation about the platform.

Many netizens were quick to compare it with Medium; but when e27 sat down with CEO Hugo Diba and CMO Andrias Ekoyuono, they were the taking the comparison lightly.

“It is really up to them how they want to see this platform,” Diba said.

“We have no exact preference of global platforms or startups [that we drew inspiration from]. What we were thinking when we set up this business was the problems faced by the consumers, advertisers, media, even to issues such as information accuracy. What will be the best form to answer these problems?” Ekoyuono explained.

Kumparan itself is what the founders called a “hybrid” media platform. Available in desktop and mobile the company generates content from the startup’s own editorial team and users can only write and share their own content through the platform. Just like in any social media platform, users are able to follow different profiles and topics, and will only see contents relevant to their personal interests on their personal feed.

Diba explains that right now 50 per cent of the content that Kumparan is publishing is generated by their own editorial team, while the rest is by their own users.

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Contributors include public figures such as Minister of Communications and Informatics Rudiantara, singer Aimee Saras, actress Karina Salim, senior Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician Hidayat Nur Wahid, former Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Sudirman Said, as well as volunteer teacher community Indonesia Mengajar as guest authors.

“Back then, by reading one or two media, we would know enough of what we need to know for the day. But today there are just too many things [to know]; what you, Andrias, and I need would be different. For us, the future of media will be how it is able to serve as a platform to bridge collaboration between information from the editorial team and the readers,” Diba explains.

He then adds that the challenge lies in capturing “big” stories through user-generated content that do not undermine the ethics of journalism, the reason why Kumparan will also edit the contents that are being submitted to the platform.

Ekoyuono also stresses that Kumparan aims to be a media platform with an impact towards social change.

He pointed the example of a recent article on Kumparan about a 93-year-old man who sells bread for a living. The man has a dream of going on pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, but was not able to afford it. After publishing the article, Kumparan then teamed up with Indonesian crowdfunding platform for social causes KitaBisa to help the old man make his dream come true.

Within just two days, they were able to raise up to IDR40 million (US$3,000).

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“These are the kind of things that we need to continue on exploring … as ‘solving problems’ continue to become he DNA of startups,” Ekoyuono said.

An all-star team and an ample bag of gold

The Kumparan team does not seem to joke around with their mission to create an impact.

When e27 paid a visit to their office in South Jakarta, despite currently being in the beta stage, the startup was already armed with 130 employees. Most of them are in the editorial and IT team, and the startup claims to receive 12,000 applicants when it first opened job vacancies.

The startup itself was co-founded by a team of senior-level professionals in the field of journalism and tech, mainly from Indonesian leading news portal Detik. Names included Budiono Darsono (former Detik CEO), Abdul Rahman (Detik co-founder), Calvin Lukmantara (Detik co-founder), Hugo Diba (former Detik and CNN Indonesia Business Director), Arifin Asydhad (Detik editor-in-chief), Ine Yordenaya (former Detik Vice Editor-in-Chief, Head of Lifestyle Content), Heru Tjatur (former Detik CTO), and Yusuf Arifin (CNN Indonesia Editor-in-Chief, Manchester City FC Media Executive).

Ekoyuono himself was previously the VP of Business Development of local venture capital firm Ideosource.

“Along the way, we saw how the online media industry has developed to a point where there is an idea and opportunity, be it from business or media perspective, to create something new. If we don’t do that, this industry will never develop,” Diba says of how the company began.

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Kumparan is also armed with an undisclosed seed funding from an angel investor, whom the team has declined to name.

Its main monetisation channel is through advertisement on its platform, which Diba dubbed as the “bread-and-butter” of online media company.

“Like many other startups, we have several alternative funding options. But the one we are focussing on is IPO, one day. But the road is still long,” Ekoyuono adds.

Save it for the rainy day

As in many parts of the world, today is a challenging time for journalism in Indonesia as the government is planning to oblige online media to include a special barcode on their platform. The proposal is part of an effort to curb the rise of “fake news” during the current election season — but many see the move as a threat to Indonesia’s press freedom.

“We are facing the same issue everyday. We see how hoaxes, hate speeches distributed freely, everybody is panicking … This is why I told you that a media platform has the responsibility to set things straight,” Diba says.

For the year 2017, Kumparan will focus on market adoption.

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“We were just being launched and we hope that we will be able to be accepted by the society. We are also targetting healthy growth, getting feedbacks. But like any other startup, we will continue on improvement and adding new things,” Ekoyuono closes.

The post How Kumparan plans to take Indonesian media landscape to the future appeared first on e27.