Nov 27 2023 26 mins
The global e-book market totalled USD24 billion last year. KaryaKarsa founder Ario Tamat discusses the company's path to creating a viable self-serve online publishing platform, one of the first to enable significant monetization opportunities for Indonesia's writers, and creators of other sorts of media; from audio to video to comics to photographs. A talented musician himself, Ario and cofounders Pribadi Prananta and the late Aria Rajasa asked: "Why not create a platform where fans could give money directly to their favorite creators in return for them continuing to create their favorite work?" The business indeed seems to have found successful product-market fit selling weekly serialized stories. "We have 240,000 creators. Some 50% of them are writers and our current user base is 1.8 million registered users". An EBITDA-positive business, the company intends to add further categories and functionality to perpetuate its nearly 2X growth year-on-year.