Sealing a Seed Funding from East Ventures, Alkemis Games Wants to Go Global

Alkemis Games becomes East Ventures’ first portfolio in Surabaya. The startup plans to allocate the received undisclosed funding to recruit more talents. They are now on the verge of finishing their very first game and expect to release the masterpiece this coming March or April.

As reported by Tech In Asia, Alkemis Games was established by Tedo Salim, whose experience as a game engineer at Schell Games Pittsburgh and software engineer at Gree International San Fransisco cannot be ignored, back in August this year. The startup focuses on developing mobile games for global market.

Salim told DailySocial that Alkemis has enlarged their team to 11 talents in the first two months of its existence, and is still looking for more, especially server engineer, mobile client engineer, and game artist.

He mentioned, “To be honest, I was skeptical when I first started in Surabaya. I figured that I would give it a shot and if it turns out that I was not able to find the talent here I would move to Jakarta or Bandung. However, after a month or so, it was clear to me that Surabaya definitely has what it takes.”

At the moment, Alkemis is in the process of finishing their first title which is expected to be out in March or April 2015. Salim claimed that it takes six months for him and his team to finish one game project.

When being asked about the Indonesian gaming industry potential, Salim replied, “We definitely have the raw talents, but what we lack are the people who can take those raw talents, bring them together, and create a product that has international appeal. This is what I am hoping to do. Whether or not there will be a Supercell or GungHo coming out of Indonesia, I think that takes time, it won't happen overnight, but it will happen eventually.”

Talking about the game genre that Alkemis focuses on, Salim claimed that his team goes with freemium mid-core games. Popular games included in this genre are “Clash of the Clans” and “Brave Frontier”.

Willson Cuaca, East Ventures’ Co-Founder and Managing Partner, told DailySocial that the very reason behind his company’s involvement is the team tha Alkemis possesses. He argued that while there are countless game developers in Indonesia, the available market isn’t big enough to accommodate them. Thus, East Ventures is eager to find out whether they can promote Alkemis Games to the global market as a starlet from Indonesia or not.

Update: There is an additional comment by Tedo Salim about the talent search in Surabaya and the potential of gaming business in Indonesia