Kurio Becomes a Hit, Postpones Monetization Plans

It seems that Kurio knows best what to do with the series A funding they have just sealed. As being stated at the launching of its app yesterday (30/9), Kurio plans to pre-install its app on each and every unit of Polytron smartphone as well as hold the “Kurio for Publisher” program which may be beneficial to push its growth even further.

Interestingly, David Wayne Ika, the founder of Kurio, stated that their partnership with Polytron is not based on exclusivity. He added that any other smartphone brands can come to them and offer them a partnership, thus make Kurio as one of their distribution channels.

Kurio itself is a considerably unique product developed by the Merah Putih Inc. There are three pillars that the product holds: users, media or publishers, and advertisers. To uphold those pillars, Kurio initiates a number of programs, and the pre-mentioned “Kurio for Publisher” is one of them. “We [Kurio] will always attempt to add more publishers to our list, as we target to have more than 500 MoUs with publishers in Indonesia, before expanding our business to Southeast Asia,” Ika stated.

Ika added that Kurio will not be in rush to monetize. “We haven’t planned to monetize in the near future, as we are now focusing to develop the best product”.

Despite the fact that Kurio has the patience to wait, the data suggests that it actually doesn't need to. So far, Kurio gets 5000 of downloads per day in average. On a monthly basis, more than 40 percent of them are active users who spend 10 minutes of their time to access the app daily.

Further about the number of downloads Kurio gets, a quarter of it derives from iOS users, and the rest comes from Android users. “However, according to our data, iOS users are more loyal and spend more time to read our contents,” Ika said.

As a smart news app, Kurio undeniably require trusted sources from media and publishers to maintain the quality of its services. In this regard, the platform has partnered with MRA, one of the largest magazines and lifestyle media in Indonesia. This is inline with Ika’s statement, “actually we have also established partnership with other prominent media, not only MRA. We want to stay pragmatic at the moment as we have yet planned to monetize. They (media) have also been supportive to push Kurio using their contents. Should there are any media or publishers who want to give us an access to their contents, please do contact us,” Ika continued.

Ika also stated that Kurio is on its path to collaborate with communities. Prior to this, he added that Kurio won’t only provide news based on their popularity, but also based on the needs of professionals. This is based on Ika’s faith that many Indonesian people join communities which accommodate their profession and skills set.

Kurio’s decision to categorize news based on profession is actually in line with the very reason of its establishment, which is to change the way of Indonesian people in using internet. It is true that most of Indonesian people access internet for eight to nine hours in a day, but they spend most of their time to access social media, like Facebook or Twitter, have an online chat, or play online games. Whereas, they can get much more should they are willing to allocate some of their time to read articles which may level up themselves and their professionalism.

“We have prepared hundreds of web design, UI/UX, marketing, economics, and other stuffs. This is what differentiate Kurio with other similar platforms. We will be more aggressive in publishing news and be less intensive in providing professional contents, as we will curate our contents,” Ika explained.

Kurio is now available for both Android and iOS platform. Considering that the app has been such a hit already, it is not impossible to see it being released for other operating system in the future.

[Header illustration: DailySocial Doc.]