Waves, an audio and podcast startup based in Ho Chi Minh City, has raised USD 1.2 million in seed funding led by Singapore’s Insignia Ventures Partners. Other investors include Hustle Fund and Skystar Capital.
Founded in 2019 by Kevin Gao and Ben Minh Le, Waves aims to become one of the leading platforms in Southeast Asia for podcast and audio content. At the moment, it has more than 30 original programs, 50 programs created with partners, and hosts 500,000 other programs for users to listen to for free.
Waves said it will release a mobile app on the Apple App Store and Google Play this month. The company will focus on working with Vietnam’s top content creators to produce more original programs.
Currently, content creators in Vietnam primarily make videos for platforms like YouTube and TikTok. But Yinglan Tan, founder and managing parter of Insignia Ventures Partners, said that the dominance of audio platforms like Spotify has shown that audio content is the next evolutionary stage of digital content, and that the trend has landed in Southeast Asia.