Migme Limited or ASX:MIG (formerly mig33) is a global digital media company that provides social entertainment services. The company is headquartered in Singapore and aimed at emerging markets of South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Middle East. Migme and LoveByte are its famous social entertainment apps and it also owns the artist management platform “Alivenotdead” and e-commerce platform “Sold”. The company works on freemium business model and provides microblogging, chat, and other entertainment content to get new users. Its monetization model isn’t based on advertising, but in-app purchases which is a successful way of generating revenue for social networking and social gaming entertainment companies. The company uses vibrant virtual goods such as gifts, avatars, games, stickers and emoticons for monetization. Its services are accessible throughthe desktop web as well as mobile platform (including iOS and Google Play apps.)
The undervalued migme has experienced 40% quarter-on-quarter user growth. The platform currently has an average of more than 5 million users per month and growing.
The company is registered in Australia and primarily listed on Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: MIG) and it also listed on Deutsche Borse (WKN: A117AB). The company has about 100 employees and it has offices in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
History
Migme was founded in December 2005 as mig33, in Perth Australia. Later in 2007, it shifted its operations to Silicon Valley, where it focused on grooming its
technology capabilities and steve Boom, the SVP of Yahoo joined MIG as CEO. It acquired significant users in emerging markets such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
In June 2009, it became the most downloaded app and it was very famous on low-end java based phones. In September of the same year it shifted its gravity to Singapore to be closer to its key markets in Asia . During the relocation of company, Goh resumed the CEO title, and Steve Boom became executive chairman. The company at the time had 40 million registered users, including 4 million monthly active users. MIG built a good business with the help of billions of people who were using feature phones instead of smartphones. With the virtual gift business of MIG it witnessed 400 percent growth in second quarter of 2010.
In July 2011, MIG launched a program for game developers to develop games for its platform that had reached more than 50 million users. In January 2012, MIG launched twitter like micro blogging feature for its 55 million user base.
Through a complex deal in 2014, company pivoted into new market and became publicly traded company in Singapore. The company was rebranded as MigMe and shifted from feature phones to Android devices. It went public in August 2010, and was listed on Australian primary stock exchange ASX. Upon this change of activities Steven Goh said:
“We believe in the opportunity to bulk mig33 up to something much more interesting now and being listed allows us to realize that opportunity. [We] looked at Singapore and Australia [and believe that] Australia is a simpler, less risky, and easier path to getting there. Additionally, Australian tech companies
are getting recognized valuation-wise and there is a history of billion dollar exits, whereas in Singapore the feedback is mixed.”
In 2015, the company made big moves in Indonesia and acquired Indonesian fashion e-store Shopdeca and social news site Hipwee. According to Mr. Goh, they spent 2015 building the “foundations” to further expand into Philippines and India soon.
“In 2016, we plan to consolidate on our progress made last year and continue to grow monthly active users, … We will be focused on platform upgrades and the integration of the portfolio companies that we have acquired, with the view to improving operating margins later in the year.”
Founders
Steven Goh
Mr Steven is co-founder, CEO and Executive Director of MigMe. Steven holds a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA from the UWA Perth. He has 20 years of experience in developing, commercializing internet services and fundraising. He is also founder of Sanford Securities and Bell Direct. He is also involved in a number of successful startups of throughout Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA. Steven worked in Australia with a wide range of financial institutions includes chartered accounting, stock brokering, consulting and investment banking. He has raised over US$ 100 million for companies he has led and founded. He has won many professional and business awards and he is recognized as an authority on contemporary IT issues.
He has one personal investment of worth $950k in JFDI Asia
Mei Lin Ng
Mei Lin, digital marketing and start up professional is co-founder and VP marketing of migme. She co-founded MIG in 2005 when “mobile social networks” were not known. She has a key role in building the consumer brand managing a team across the US, Asia and Africa. She has lived and worked across Asia, US, Europe and Australia in tech companies aimed at mobile, social games and financial service industries.
Business Model
MIG amalgamates the services of well-known social media networks with special focus on emerging markets, specifically the Asia Pacific. It offers customized services to its targeted region and emphasizes on large population regions such as India, Indonesia.
In its starting years MIG focused the segment of market with fast growing teleconomies such as India and Indonesia, where feature phones were more common than expensive smartphones. MIG earned a good name and customer base by exploiting the overlooked world of feature phones. In the past when the smartphones were expensive and not common MIG was one of the many companies that lived in the often overlooked world of feature phones.
In July 2009, MIG experimented with virtual gifts which is a non physical gift consisting animation of a picture of a gift item instead of the real gift item itself sent through the internet. By January 2010, every month some 1.5 million virtual gifts were being exchanged and currently about 150,000 virtual gifts are being exchanged on migme every day. The company is getting revenue through selling these virtual gifts. According to Steven in some countries the customers paying
for virtual gifts are 3.5 percent on the other hand, there are some countries where this figure is close to 12 percent.
MIG is also acquiring users rapidly by engaging its user base with an increasing pool of verified celebrities and artists. MIG drives the user number with the help of local celebrities who create and share content on migme platform. The users who are engaged through celebrities spend more on premium virtual goods and gifts. Celebrities get the share in revenue which is generated through their fans on migme. This helps artists and celebrities to monetize their fan base, in areas where revenue has been eroded by widespread piracy.
Funding and investments
The digital mobile company has raised total $49.72M in seven rounds of investments. In the first round it raised US$10 million in funding led by Accel Partners and RedPoint Ventures, two well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firms. The series B round was led by DCM with participation from existing Series A investors Accel, Redpoint and TVP the company pulled in US$13.5 million. The third round was led by Japan’s Gree in which migme raised US$8.9 million Indonesian telecom entrepreneur, Sugialam. An undisclosed amount was raised in Series D announced on August 1, 2012 from DMP VC. In 2014, Foxconn-linked handset company became the migme’s largest shareholder through an investment of US$9.6 million, giving it a 20% stake in the company. In September 2015, in undisclosed series of venture MIG secured US$10 million in placement. In March 2016, migme signed a Memorandum of Understanding with photo and video app developer Meitu and placed 11,650,000 migme shares to Meitu at US$0.44 per share, raising US$ 5.12 million for the company
Competitors
Blue Lion Mobile (QEEP)
QEEP is a mobile social network app and multiplayer gaming platform launched in 2006. It was initially meant for Java mobile owners, but now any phone which as at least Java MDP 2.0, Android 2.3 or iOS 8 supports QEEP. This free to download app is supported over 1,000 different model phones and is available in various languages.
DeNA
DeNA Co., Ltd. is a platform focused on social games, e-commerce and other internet services for mobile devices and PCs. Its current flagship business is Mobage, a mobile social games platform which offers first- and third-party games on four localized user networks across Japan, South Korea, China, and the West. Mobage has over 40 million registered users in Japan with more than 1,800 titles. Currently it has over 1,600 employees worldwide working 15 cities across 11 countries and regions. The company generated more than US$1.8 billion in 2012.
eBuddy
eBuddy (formerly eMessenger ) is a web and mobile messaging service that enable users of Facebook Chat, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, AOL and ICQ accounts to chat free of cost in one aggregated interface. It started in 2003 and created the world’s first web browser based instant messaging services. Currently it has more than 30 million unique users that exchange over 17 billion messages per month.
Kakao Corp
Kakao is a Korean company behind KakaoTalk (sometimes KaTalk), which is both a messaging app and free call features. It also provides the platform for third party apps and games which user can download and play with their friends. It was launched in 2010 and currently it has 170 million users. This app is used by 93% of smartphone owners in South Korea.
MocoSpace
MocoSpace was founded in 2005 by mobile industry experts Jamie Hall and Justin Siegel. It is a mobile social network for social games and apps. It has over 100 million users who enjoy its services free of cost on iOS, Android, or any Web-enabled mobile phone.
MocoSpace is a privately held company headquartered in Boston, MA.
Nimbuzz
Nimbuzz founded in 2007, it is an instant messaging aggregator for smartphones, tablets and PCs. It also offers free calls, instant messaging, social networking and social games. In addition, Nimbuzz also offers cheap calling rates to most of countries in the world. It has 150 million users in 200 countries and it garners more than 210,000 new users per day.
Tencent Holdings
Tencent is a Chinese investment holding company whose subsidiaries provide social entertainment, value-added internet, web portals, e-commerce, multiplayer online games and online advertising services. Tencent well known offering Tencent QQ (instant messenger) has occupied largest market share in
China.
Acquisitions and Partners
In February 2014, migme made its first acquisition by buying Alivenotdead, which is a website that connects fans with the artists. Alivenotdead was founded in 2007 by the co-founders of Rotten Tomatoes, a famous movie review site. The transaction details of this acquisition were not made public. Since the listing of MIG on ASX, it worked hard building up its social platform better and bigger. It acquired LoveByte, an app for couples to chat in 2014. It has also acquired Sold.sg for a mixture of shares and cash which added a playful social e-commerce component to migme’s virtual gifts and games platform. Early in 2016 it acquired the social news site Hipwee owned and operated by Jakarta-based PT Hipwee Media Solutions. Migme completed the acquisition of Shopdeca with cash payment of US$710,000 and a total of 884,270 migme shares. Shopdeca founder Andreas Thamrin has joined migme as Global Head of e-commerce to lead the expansion of its e-commerce operations. Mr Steven said:
“Platforms are the next generation of online business. The fastest growing and most disruptive companies in history — Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, AirBnb and eBay— are platform businesses. migme is building a platform business focused on social engagement and interactions that can be monetized. We are building our platform specifically for the next half of the world coming online through low-cost smartphones, primarily in South East Asia. The Shopdeca acquisition helps us bolster the social ecommerce element of our platform.”
In addition, migme set a strategic partnership with Meitu a leading photo and
video editing mobile app with more than 900 million users. Migme partners with India based Paytm, an online payment and e-commerce platform for its online payments. Another Key partner of Migme is Mimopay, an internet service provider based out of Indonesia. The partnership helps migme users to buy credits for company services. Nepal based eSewa is also in partnership with migme to facilitate financial transactions via mobile and web based services. Recently the company has announced a strategic partnership with fantasy cricket sports platform CricBattle Inc to integrate its services onto migme’s platform.
Metrics and Revenue
Migme’s last fiscal year ended march 2016 and according to figures released by migme, it is showing an impressive growth. The digital media company says it has raised its revenue by 525% to US$8.7 million in 2015 from the last year, which trimmed its net loss by 27 percent to US$14.9 million.
The undervalued migme has experienced 40% quarter-on-quarter user growth and its monthly active users (MAUs) grown to 32 million, which is a 220 percent jump from 2014. The current estimated valuation of migme is US$46 million.