Visinema Receives Rp45.5 Billion Series A Funding Led by Intudo Ventures

Today (2/26) Visinema announced series A funding worth of US$3.25 million or equivalent to Rp45.5 billion. This round led by Intudo Ventures, followed by the previous investors, GDP Venture and Ancora Capital. In terms of seed, the company had a GDP investment worth of US$2 million.

Additional capital raised is to be focused on building capacity in terms of animation content production, talent acquisition, and international expansion.

"The Indonesian film industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years, both in feature films and other unique content formats, and there continues to gain significant demand for high-quality local content. With our self-produced Hollywood-caliber content, we believe that Visinema is well-positioned to convey more Indonesian stories to the audience, both local and worldwide," Intudo Ventures' Founding Partner, Patrick Yip said.

Bekraf, on one occasion, said, the number of Indonesian cinema audiences has grown 230% in the last five years. Followed by the number of cinema that grown rapidly in the last three years, from 800 to 1800 screens. While quoting MPAA data, Indonesia is now ranked 16th for the world's Box Office market share. The resulting market value reaches $345 million.

In fact, with the work of local filmmakers, several films managed to seize the attention of millions of viewers. In 2016 for example, there are 30 million people acquired from the top 15 films. The data collected by Ideosource explained the well-filled value chain in the Indonesian film industry. Both in terms of production to distribution.

In the report published in 2017, also explained the amount of funding received by the industry. It is said that 50% of investment is targeting various companies in the film industry, not only the IP (intellectual property) owners but also the marketing and distribution channels, with the other 20% poured on filmmakers or independent producers

Visinema is to build the whole production ecosystem

The current market motion is enough for players in the industry to be optimistic. Wearing an ambitious vision, armed with available resources, Visinema wants to develop a comprehensive studio ecosystem. The aim is to help end-to-end film processes, from concept advancement, talent development, production, distribution to monetization.

The company currently has sub-organizations such as Visinema Music which produces music for films; Visinema Campus for creative recruitment and labs; and Skriptura as spaces for writers. Not only appearances in theaters or television, the produced film and serial content also began to be distributed through digital channels such as Netflix, iflix, and Goplay.

Besides being favored by consumers due to convenience, the on-demand video platform clearly provides better benefits for film creators as a fairly efficient distribution channel. Especially in the midst of cross-platform competition which now has reached over ten fingers, one of the strategies is that each player wants to present their original series. Through their work, such as Filosofi Kopi The Series, Visinema also gained profits.

The economic value produced from films is quite large - along with the increasing quality. Below listed the biggest films achievements of local studio productions based on revenue:

Visinema's Founder & CEO, Angga Dwimas Sasongko founded the company in 2008. Through the successful story of Nanti Kita Cerita Tentang Hari Ini and Keluarga Cemara, this studio is getting well-known by the public.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian