Tech in Asia is on an aggressive roll following its round of funding from IMJ Fenox VC recently. After having swallowed Singapore based blog SGE, today it officially announced its acquisition of Indonesian mobile gaming blog GameSaku from Apps Foundry. The Singapore-based tech blog is kickstarting a new property covering the games industry in the region and it will build the new blog from this acquisition.
GameSaku was founded by Glenn Prasetya and Hendri Salim back in 2012 and within 16 months, it claims to have had 800,000 monthly page views with a 15% monthly growth having covered all manners of smartphone gaming. The blog initially covered only iOS games but eventually expanded to writing about games on other smartphone platforms such as Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone.
“GameSaku will be migrated to id.gamesinasia.com. It will become the backbone of Games in Asia Indonesia”, Tech in Asia boss Willis Wee told DailySocial on Wednesday. Asked if Games in Asia will be gunning for the industry veterans the likes of Kotaku, Joystiq, or even IGN which has its own Asia Pacific edition, Wee said, “We are not competing with international game blogs. We will stick to our Asia niche and only cover games in Asia or popular games and game-related news happening in Asia. We want to play our small part to promote games (and its culture) in Asia to the rest of the world.”
The acquisition is part of an expansion by Tech in Asia into the gaming industry which plans to launch a new blog called Games in Asia in the near future. While GameSaku will eventually be part of Games in Asia, currently the site remains on its own domain as Games in Asia is yet to go live.
“We see a lot of potential in gaming in Southeast Asia, so Games in Asia is a natural step for us. With Hendri and Glenn in our team, we are confident that Games in Asia will grow well in Indonesia”, Wee said in a statement.
Games in Asia is set to be an English-based regional blog which covers all manners of video games relevant to the region. Unlike GameSaku however, it will cover PC and console gaming as well.
This acquisition is also interesting in that GameSaku was one of the two blogs operated by mobile app company Apps Foundry which is run by Willson Cuaca, the managing partner and co-founder of investment firm East Ventures. The other blog being Apple-oriented blog MakeMac. East Ventures is an investor in Tech in Asia from its early days as marketing blog Penn Olson. So in a sense, this was a family affair.