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The Asian Entrepreneur, a media and publishing company based in Malaysia, has announced that the company has raised a US $8 million funding round.
The company also announced that it will be rebranding to a new name, "Empirics Asia", starting 2021.
Founded by Melvin Poh, Akhil Menon, and Harshul Srivastava in 2013, The Asian Entrepreneur is a crowd publishing platform dedicated to providing an avenue for users to access and participate in the sharing of business knowledge in Asia.
The company claims to have "thousands of volunteer authors and editors" who have collectively "produced over 1 million business articles" for its readers over the years.
Despite raising the large funding round, founder Melvin Poh states that Empirics Asia remains "completely ad-free" — something very rare to see in a media/publishing company.
He also adds that Empirics Asia "does not charge its clients for advertorials" (paid content), and aims to keep the website free for readers (no pay-walls).
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That being said, the business model behind the company still remains fairly opaque, although its description on CrunchBase states that the company produces physical copies of its magazine on entrepreneurship and operates a "publishing house".
Much of the company's "over 1 million business articles" also do not seem to be published on their website, which currently has some 6,000+ pages indexed on Google.
Moving forward, Empirics Asia has partnered with several publishing houses and a tech development company to pursue wider publishing initiatives, as well as to expand its digital platform to integrate new services and feature offerings for its users.
"Our rebrand and name change signify an important point in the evolution of our organisation. Throughout our history we have delivered reliable practical insights and collective educational value to our users. The new name is much more descriptive of our ethos and aligns with our ambition to further pursue a wider knowledge project that is not limited only to the fields of business in Asia but to bring the entire collective experience and knowledge of Asia to the forefront. The rebrand is also a commitment to further offerings and solutions to continue our commitment to delivering value to our users.", mentioned Harshul Srivastava, co-founder and CSO.
The organization's founder, Melvin Poh also confirmed that the new platform shall retain its "open-access model" for its users.
“Empirics will not dismantle the work we have done with The Asian Entrepreneur; rather, it will build on it with a more ambitious vision to facilitate a greater open exchange of the collective knowledge, experiences and insights in the region of Asia to elevate and enrich our lives.”
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