Slice Group completes seed round to help brands manage creator relationships in ID

Indonesian customer relationship management (CRM) firm, Slice Group, has completed a seed round of financing led by Intudo Ventures and Arise as it looks to help brands and agencies better manage their relationships with influencers and content creators.

The value of the seed round was US$645,000.

Founded in January 2022, Slice Group is an influencer marketing CRM that aims to help brands and agencies better manage their relationships with influencers and content creators, aiding them to work faster, more efficiently, and build long-term relationships. The platform, according to the firm, offers brands and agencies a full-suite of tools to manage long-term relationships and unlock the ability to work with more creators without increasing headcount.

With this round of financing, Slice Group plans to refine its product offerings, accelerate platform development, drive sales, and enhance recruitment efforts. It then plans to build out embedded finance features for both brands, agencies and content creators within the platform, including invoice financing for agencies to offer invoice loans for agencies to manage cash flow and help creators get paid faster along with a digital wallet for brands, agencies, and creators to facilitate payments.

Slice Group is led by Jesse Bouman, the CEO, who was previously the head of innovation and technology at Mindshare Worldwide and Nesha Hanzdima, the COO, who previously founded Indonesian production house Violad Creative Studio. Inspired by the inefficiencies that affected the creator economy, which they had gleaned from their experiences in managing brand campaigns, the platform aims to help creators make better informed decisions based on verified data.

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Bouman said that even though brands are investing more in creators and influencer marketing, far too many marketers are still relying on manual processes, which siloes a lot of brand dollars to the same few influencers. “We created Slice Group with the needs of both brands and creators in mind, to help them build sustainable relationships and work more efficiently on influencer campaigns,” he added.

He went on to explain that aspiring entrepreneurs will start their journeys as content creators and then use the audience they amass to grow their new endeavours. “We want to power this creator transition across Asia by stabilizing their income and enabling them to be full-time creators,” he added.

Especially with influencer marketing becoming a mainstream practice for brands to engage with audiences around the world that brands must invest in, Eddy Chan of Intudo Ventures believes that it is also important to have localised knowledge of the unique conditions of different markets. “With their intimate understanding of Indonesia’s creator economy, we believe Slice Group is positioned to deliver outsized value to both brands and creators alike,” Chan added.

Aldi Adrian Hartanto, partner at Arise said that creators are facing the classic problems of informal economy, such as lack of financing access as well as operational inefficiencies. This is where we believe Slice Group's product along with Jesse and Nesha's robust experience is well-positioned to empower millions of creators in Indonesia from seed-to-scale, from micro-to-mega influencer, together with Slice Group,” Hartanto added.

Indonesia has been seeing a lot of growth lately as it looks to make it easier to attract global talent and investors with an upcoming golden visa programme which aims at offering international talent and investors a longer stay permit, according to The Jakarta Post. 

The news came after a cabinet meeting with President Joko Widodo and Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno. Following the meeting, Sandiaga told reporters present that the golden visa could significantly impact Indonesia's efforts to attract more foreign talent as well as investments which could then create more job opportunities locally. 

He noted that the golden visa will look to attract talent in the digitalisation, health, research and technology space and that he hopes that it will attract more entrepreneurs and foreigners into the country.

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