Indonesia’s Printerous raises $1.4M to digitize traditional printing

Printerous, an Indonesia startup that is bringing the country’s printing industry into the digital era, has raised $1.4 million. The round was led by Golden Gate Ventures with participation from U.S. firm Sovereign’s Capital and Indonesian conglomerate Gunung Sewu Kencana.

The two-year-old company is using the internet to make traditional printing more efficient and convenient. Printerous started out offering a consumer-focused service to help users print pictures, predominantly captured on a smartphone, but last year it expanded to cover business customers, such as banners, business cards, leaflets and more.

In an interview, Printerous CEO and co-founder Kevin Osmond told TechCrunch that business services now account for around 70 percent of revenue.

Osmond described the business as a marketplace because Printerous works directly with existing printers to service orders, using delivery services to dispatch orders within 24 hours. It currently operates in Jakarta, which is where the proceeds of this round will spent to increase its printing partners and acquire new customers. Printerous aims to double its 50 partners to 100 before the end of the year.

“We do have expansion plans to other big cities in Indonesia, but maybe in Q3 or Q4,” he said. “We need to be big at home, our vision is Southeast Asia.”

Printerous isn’t alone on pursuing a digital opportunity in printing. Thailand-based Gogoprint, which we wrote about last year, has expanded to Malaysia and Singapore and has plans to move into Indonesia. Osmond welcomed the competition regionally, saying that it is good for the industry.

“Online printing is very new in Indonesia,” he said. “It’s not that we are competing with each other, the main competitor is traditional offline printing which is where most of the market is. It’s positive that this is another help to educate the market online.”

Nonetheless, there’s plenty at stake in Indonesia, which is Southeast Asia’s largest economy. Osmond estimates that the country’s printing market is worth $9.1 billion per year. More widely, Southeast Asia’s digital economy is tipped to reach $200 billion per year by 2025.