Indonesia’s Bridestory grabs funding from four VCs, new Jakarta player Sovereign’s Capital...
When Kevin Mintaraga got married in 2012, he wasn’t expecting to stumble into a new business venture. Now, two years later, the 29-year-old Indonesian serial entrepreneur finds himself the founder and CEO of Bridestory, a wedding-related services portal for Indonesia. Mintaraga’s site doubles as a wedding inspiration resource and an open marketplace for vendors to connect with soon-to-be-wed couples.
This morning, Bridestory announced it raised funding from four local firms including Jakarta’s new player, Sovereign’s Capital, as the lead investor. The amount is undisclosed. Fenox VC, East Ventures and Beenos Plaza also participated. (Disclosure: East Ventures and Fenox VC also invest in Tech in Asia. For more information, see our ethics page.)
The investors reference a high level of confidence in Mintaraga and Bridestory co-founder Etienne Hassell, who has previously seen success as an entrepreneur in the Caribbean. Luke Roush, managing principal of the Sovereign’s Capital Jakarta office says, “We are impressed with how they have bootstrapped through early execution to demonstrate market traction [...] at the end of the day we are betting on their ability to execute against their business plans while making changes as necessary.”
Mintaraga is better-known for starting up a digital agency called Magnivate in March 2008, an agressive company that was later acquired by global advertising firm WPP. Today Mintaraga’s company goes by the name XM Gravity and handles high-profile clients in Southeast Asia like Unilever, XL Axiata, Singapore Tourism Board, and Nestle. XM Gravity also earned Mintaraga the 2013 “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Ernst and Young.
Love spares no expense
Coming from the ad world, Mintaraga is keen on spotting large-scale market opportunities. “After our wedding, my wife became a wedding planner,” he recalls. “She shared with me about how much her clients spent on weddings and that opened my eyes to see the big potential of the wedding industry. I started to do more research and found that the wedding business has a huge annual market size of US$300 billion globally.”
As Mintaraga delved deeper into learning about internet wedding businesses, he noticed most of the industry’s key players were all publishers. According to him, this meant that even big-name competitors that are publicly listed like The Knot and Japan’s Minna no Wedding (which means “Wedding for All” in Japanese) produce inspirational content for engaged couples, but rely mainly on advertising for revenue.
Lien：meilleur mobile en ce moment
![[IMG]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tBc6GuxbAjhxYWZP-X9ZC4wsHhicvsk9_8O41warJfCaYyYXbteq3aQxia2DjfCCFSp07BS-MYL0isYXiSvI-sC6wRKol64Ak3fkWgnI5Lfr3FXFf4Tifg9V36zyXOHAvlvY3pdmsa6nGZI1k2rMIldsk6GFs=s0-d)
This morning, Bridestory announced it raised funding from four local firms including Jakarta’s new player, Sovereign’s Capital, as the lead investor. The amount is undisclosed. Fenox VC, East Ventures and Beenos Plaza also participated. (Disclosure: East Ventures and Fenox VC also invest in Tech in Asia. For more information, see our ethics page.)
The investors reference a high level of confidence in Mintaraga and Bridestory co-founder Etienne Hassell, who has previously seen success as an entrepreneur in the Caribbean. Luke Roush, managing principal of the Sovereign’s Capital Jakarta office says, “We are impressed with how they have bootstrapped through early execution to demonstrate market traction [...] at the end of the day we are betting on their ability to execute against their business plans while making changes as necessary.”
Mintaraga is better-known for starting up a digital agency called Magnivate in March 2008, an agressive company that was later acquired by global advertising firm WPP. Today Mintaraga’s company goes by the name XM Gravity and handles high-profile clients in Southeast Asia like Unilever, XL Axiata, Singapore Tourism Board, and Nestle. XM Gravity also earned Mintaraga the 2013 “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Ernst and Young.
Love spares no expense
Coming from the ad world, Mintaraga is keen on spotting large-scale market opportunities. “After our wedding, my wife became a wedding planner,” he recalls. “She shared with me about how much her clients spent on weddings and that opened my eyes to see the big potential of the wedding industry. I started to do more research and found that the wedding business has a huge annual market size of US$300 billion globally.”
As Mintaraga delved deeper into learning about internet wedding businesses, he noticed most of the industry’s key players were all publishers. According to him, this meant that even big-name competitors that are publicly listed like The Knot and Japan’s Minna no Wedding (which means “Wedding for All” in Japanese) produce inspirational content for engaged couples, but rely mainly on advertising for revenue.
Lien：meilleur mobile en ce moment
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