Likai Gu, Founder and CEO of SoundOn
Singapore-based investment firm Kollective Ventures (KV) and Turn Capital (the family office of Joseph Phua, Co-founder and Non-Executive Chairman of 17LIVE) have jointly agreed to fully acquire Taiwanese podcast platform SoundOn.
The details of the deal were not disclosed.
As per a press note, SoundOn will continue to operate under its current brand and its services remain unaffected. KV and Turn Capital will look to continue to “accelerate” the growth of the company and the industry in the near future.
Also Read: How 5-year-old live-streaming app 17LIVE acquired 60M users globally
Founded in late 2019 by Likai Gu, SoundOn produces its own content shows featuring Taiwan’s top influencers, besides connecting podcasters to advertisers. The platform also manages its own podcast player app and website, which it claims has been the go-to source for discovering new podcasts in the Taiwanese market.
SoundOn said it has grown to become the largest podcast hosting platform in Taiwan, with over 35 million monthly podcast downloads. This number is projected to grow to over 500 million downloads in 2021.
The Taiwanese podcast industry has grown exponentially since SoundOn’s entry in 2019. The number of podcasts produced for the local audience has grown from less than 50 before 2019 to over 10,000 today. SoundOn claimed its own traffic has grown over 20x in the past year.
“With the growth in market size and SoundOn’s strong product-market fit, the company has achieved over 70 per cent market share and looks to drive further domination in 2021. Kollective Ventures and Turn Capital see massive potential in the podcast and audio space in Taiwan, and this acquisition allows us to further invest and develop the podcast ecosystem,” said Phua.
Also Read: Kollective Ventures acquires Paktor Group from M17 Entertainment
“Recent global success stories in the space, like Clubhouse, have shown the explosive potential of the social audio entertainment space. We look forward to exploring synergies between our audio-related portfolio companies to create an Asian beachhead in this space,” opined Khenglian Ho, Managing Partner at Kollective Ventures.
Last May, KV had acquired Paktor Group, which was founded by Phua, from M17 Entertainment. Paktor is the umbrella that owns a few dating assets, including its namesake app available in Taiwan, Korea and Southeast Asia, and Goodnight, a voice-dating app.
On Monday, Podcast Network Asia, a Philippine-based podcast network agency, announced raising of US$750,000 in seed funding from Foxmont Capital, Venturra Discovery, Kumu and Lisa Gokongwei, President of Summit Media.
Image Credit: SoundOn
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