Rev Asia’s Says.com to ‘go local’ in Indonesia, Philippines

• Expects overseas revenue contribution to ‘jump significantly’
• To provide ‘relevant, highly-shareable and relatable content’ to Gen-Y

REV Asia Holdings Sdn Bhd, a 70% subsidiary of Malaysian public-listed firm Rev Asia Bhd, will be bringing localised versions of its ‘social news’ portal Says.com into Indonesia and the Philippines over the next six months.
 
“The plan is to roll out local editions of Says in the Philippines and Indonesia by the first and second quarter of 2016 [respectively],” managing director Voon Tze Khay (pic above) told Digital News Asia (DNA) in Petaling Jaya recently.
 
The local versions would be a new move for the company, but it does already have a presence in those countries via its content distribution arm, Rev Social International Sdn Bhd, which operates 8share.com.
 
Currently, Rev Asia Holdings has a team of five people working on the Philippines business, of which two are based in Malaysia. For the Indonesian market, it has two employees based in Malaysia and one in Jakarta.
 
Voon said he plans to hire more. “There have been challenges in finding the right talents for both markets; however, in recent weeks, we have seen an increase in potential candidates for the various positions we are hiring for.
 
“As the business scales from quarter to quarter, we anticipate our team size to double in these markets, both to operate our new content business as well as to manage the existing 8share platform in their markets,” he added.
 
According to comScore, Says.com ranked 16 in Malaysia in terms of the number of unique visitors in August via desktops.
 
“We have seen great success in Malaysia with Says.com. The site is growing exponentially in monthly unique visits, experiencing the biggest jump in visitors in August 2015 in the category of Top 30 Local Web Entities as measured by comScore,” said Voon.
 
Content consumption changes

 

One of the reasons Rev Asia Holdings want to have local versions of Says.com in Indonesia and the Philippines is Generation-Y content consumption habits, according to Voon.
 
“Most of the younger generation don’t read the newspaper and hardly allow time to even watch television.
 
“Most of their time is spent consuming content via the Internet, and websites are their main source of news,” he said.
 
And they “don’t just consume online news, but [content] that is relatable and relevant,” Voon declared.
 
“This is where the strategy of Says.com comes in – our strategy is to provide relevant, highly-shareable and relatable content that doesn’t just educate or entertain the audience, but that helps people discover more in a stream of information … that breaks things down into simple, clear and easy-to-browse segments for readers,” he added.
 
Meanwhile, for the first half ended June 30, 2015, Rev Asia Group’s social media business, which Rev Asia Holdings play a major role in, saw revenue jump 22% to RM6.87 million. During the same period, pre-tax profit more than doubled to RM1.82 million. [RM1 = US$0.23 at current rates]
 
Voon said that the Indonesia and Philippines expansion is expected to boost overseas revenue significantly in the near- to medium-term.
 
“International business revenue currently contributes less than 10% of total Rev Asia revenue, and we aim to increase this share to approximately 20-30% in the next two to three years with our growth plans in place,” he said.
 
“With a highly effective social distribution platform in 8share across the Philippines and Indonesia, the launching of localised Says.com in these markets will further amplify our content distribution strategy for brands and advertisers to our targeted audience,” he added.
 
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