//

Kompas Gramedia, Indonesia’s largest media group, is acquiring Scoop, an app that lets you subscribe to a variety of digital magazines and newspapers.

Both companies made the announcement today without revealing details about the terms of the deal.

It doesn’t come as a surprise. Kompas Gramedia is already a key investor, backing Scoop’s Singapore-headquartered parent company Apps Foundry with US$2.4 million in 2013.

Scoop was developed in Indonesia and released in 2011. It is co-founded by Willson Cuaca, who also heads early stage VC firm East Ventures. (Disclosure: East Ventures is an investor in Tech in Asia. Please see our ethics page for details.)

“This acquisition will accelerate the company’s full integration with Kompas Gramedia,” Willson said in today’s statement.

He later added that he is leaving his post as the company’s CEO, but that senior team members will remain in charge of Scoop’s development post acquisition.

Scoop already had an exclusive partnership with Kompas, which means that a lot of the content available on it comes from the Indonesian publishing house’s portfolio.

How successful is Scoop?

Without detailed information from the app’s creators, it’s difficult to gauge how successful Scoop has been in making its subscription-based model work.

It switched from a pay-per-download system to monthly subscriptions in 2015.

In today’s release, Scoop says it has 6 million downloads. App Annie counts between 500,000 and 1 million installs of the app on Android devices [login required].

The app analytics tool ranks Scoop the third-best grossing app in the lifestyle category in Indonesia’s Play Store, but it’s unclear exactly how much money they’re making. In the overall rankings which lumps together all categories, Scoop didn’t make it into the Top 500.

We’ve reached out to both parties to learn more.

(Update Dec. 16/ 1:20 pm: added Willson’s comment about his role at Scoop after the acquisition.)

This post Indonesia’s largest publisher to acquire news app Scoop appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Startups – Tech in Asia http://ift.tt/2hDe5la